TRADING HALTED FOR THE DAY

The one-sided win for the UPA government (lead by 262 seats) in the 15th Lok Sabha election, which shrugged off the exit polls results drastically, brought great cheers for the markets in early trade. The benchmark indices locked at upper circuit. The BSE and NSE have decided that the trade will start at 11:55 am (i.e. after two-hour halt).

In the first 30 seconds of trade, the Sensex crossed the 13,000 mark and inched up towards 14,000 level. This was the first time since October 2008 that the Sensex surpassed the 13,000 mark and the Nifty crossed the 4000 level. Huge upsurge of 420 points or 11.4% in the SGX Nifty was suggesting the same trend.

The 50-share NSE Nifty was up 531.65 points or 14.48% at 4,203.30 and the 30-share BSE Sensex surged 1,789.88 points or 14.70% to 13,963.30. Less than Rs 1000 crore of trade was seen in the cash and F&O segment.

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Classroom: What is a circuit breaker?

It is a system to curb excessive speculation in the stock market, applied by the stock exchange authorities, when the index spurts or plunges by more than a fixed limit. Trading is then suspended for some time to let the market cool down. If the market changes more than 10%, trading is halted for one hour, more than 15% trading is suspended for 2 hours. Although introduced in November 1992, it was used for the first time in the Bombay Stock Exchange on Tuesday, 9 March 1993 when the Sensex declined by more than 5% from the opening level, i.e. from 2451.20 to 2318.26. At that time, the circuit was 5%.

Sectoral indices

The BSE Realty Index shot up 15.84% and Bankex gained 13.63%. Among other, Capital Goods, Power, Metal, Oil & Gas and TECK indices rose 10.5-12.83%. IT, FMCG, Healthcare and Auto indices went up 4-9.64%.

Among the broader indices, the BSE Midcap Index was up 7.25% and the Smallcap Index gained 5.10%.

On the next page - Frontline stocks, Lok Sabha 2009 election results