PULL BACK RALLY

Wednesday's session turned out to be a day of recuperation as Indian equity indices witnessed a pullback rally after registering a nasty over one and half a percent on Tuesday. The key indices not only stalled a three-day downtrend, but also managed to recover a large chunk of the ground lost in the previous session. The late spurt in buying interests in index heavyweight like Reliance Industries on reports that the company is not in talks to buy a stake in unlisted mobile phone operator Aircel, pushed the frontline indices closer to the psychological 5,600 and 18,600 levels. Optimism was also evident in rate sensitive counters on speculations that the RBI may be forced to pause its monetary tightening measures after the longest stretch of rate increases in a decade. Meanwhile, sugar stocks rallied in the session as white sugar futures hit a record peak on Tuesday and raw sugar prices jumped more than 5% as shrinking cane crop from the world's No. 1 producer, Brazil, spurred buying interests. On the global front, leads from the Asian markets remained encouraging as reports that the Chinese economy expanded at a faster-than-expected rate of 9.5% in the April-June quarter from the year-ago period, gave a much needed psychological lift to the markets and eased worries over a global slowdown at a time when euro zone debt crisis showed signs of spreading to much larger nations. However, the European counterparts traded on a sluggish note since Moody's injected fresh worries into the market by downgrading Ireland's government bonds to junk status.

Earlier on Dalal Street, the benchmark got off to an optimistic beginning influenced by the pull back rally in Asian markets on getting better than expected Chinese economy reports. The frontline indices continued to trade with conviction throughout the session, without showing any signs of capitulation. After gathering steam for most part of the session, the key gauges spurted in the buying moments to settle just below important psychological levels. The NSE's 50-share broadly followed index Nifty, jumped over a percent and settled marginally below the crucial 5,600 support level while Bombay Stock Exchange's Sensitive Index, Sensex amassed close to two hundred points and closed around the psychological 18,600 mark. The broader markets appeared to be in a resurgent mood as they traded with strong gains and eventually outperformed their larger peers. On the sectoral front, it was the Consumer Durables counter which outperformed not only their sectoral peers but also the benchmarks and surged by 1.73% points as majors like Titan and Videocon soared by 1.36% and 1.30% respectively. The Oil and Gas pocket too remained amid the thick of things and gained 1.70% as majors like ONGC and RIL surged 1.97% and 1.89% respectively. The rate sensitive sectors like Realty, Automobile and Bankex too garnered a lot of traction a session after being butchered on the back of disappointing industrial output data. On the other hand only information technology pocket languished in the red terrain as Infosys extended Tuesday's 4.4% slide after narrowly missing quarterly earnings expectations and giving a muted guidance. Though, there was no other sectoral laggard, some individual names like Tata Power, HUL and Wipro failed to close in the positive terrain. The markets surged on weaker volumes of over Rs 1.05 lakh crore while the turnover for NSE F&O segment also remained on the lower side compared to Tuesday at over 0.92 lakh crore. The markets breadth remained positive as there were 1859 shares on the gaining side against 1012 shares on the losing side while 139 shares remained unchanged.

Finally, the BSE Sensex soared by 184.40 points or 1.00% to settle at 18,596.02, while the S&P CNX Nifty surged 59.30 points or 1.07% to settle at 5,585.45.
The BSE Sensex touched a high and a low of 18,626.41 and 18,465.40, respectively. The BSE Mid cap and Small cap indices were up by 1.30% and 0.97% respectively.
The top gainers on the Sensex were DLF up 2.95%, Mahindra & Mahindra up 2.20%, ONGC up 1.97%, Reliance up 1.89% and Tata Motors up 1.85%.
On the flip side, Infosys down 0.36%, Tata Power down 0.34%, Hindustan Unilever down 0.33% and Wipro down 0.17% were the top losers on the index.
The top gainers on the BSE sectoral space were Consumer Durables (CD) up 1.73%, Oil &Gas up 1.70%, Realty up 1.69%, Auto up 1.58 and Health Care (HC) up 1.26%, While IT down 0.05% was the only loser on the BSE sectoral space.
Meanwhile, Ministry of Finance has approved 6 road projects, proposed by ministry of road and transportation in fives sates at an estimated cost of Rs 9774 crore. These road projects are spread across Utter Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Orissa, Rajasthan and Gujarat.
In its fourth meeting, Public-Private Partnership Approval Committee (PPPAC) under the ministry of Finance gave approvals to these projects. Among the approved projects, six laning of Kishangarh-Udaipur-Ahmadabad is the biggest projects at a cost of Rs 5,387 crore, other two projects each involving four laning of National Highways in state of Madhya Pradesh and Orissa will come up at a cost of Rs 3,500 crore, while the four laning project of Lucknow-Sultanpur in Utter Pradesh will cost around Rs 1,013crore.
All this approved projects are being setup in various phases of National Highway Development Programme of Road and Transportation Ministry, to meet the growing demand for road and highways government is aiming to create 20 km of road every day.
The PPPAC chaired by secretary of Department of Economic Affairs, created in 2006 has so far approved 226 public-private-partnership (PPP) projects, with an expected projects cost of Rs 2, 24,464.51 crore. These approved projects include National Highways (178 proposals), Ports (22 proposals),Airports (2 proposals), Housing (17 proposals) Tourism Infrastructure (1proposal) Railways (1 proposal) and Sports Stadia (5 proposals).
The S&P CNX Nifty touched high and low of 5,596.15 and 5,541.40, respectively.
The top gainers of the Nifty were DLF up 3.78%, Kotak Bank up 3.42%, Dr Reddy up 3.27%, Reliance Capital up 3.00% and IDFC up 2.83%.

On the flip side, Tata Power down 0.94%, Infosys down 0.49%, Hindustan Unilever down 0.35%, BHEL down 0.27% and Grasim down by 0.20% were the top losers on the index.

The European markets were trading in mixed. France's CAC 40 lost 0.15%, Britain's FTSE 100 rose by 0.33% and Germany's DAX up by 0.65%.
All the Asian equity indices barring Taiwan Weighted finished their day's trade in the positive terrain on Wednesday on the back of better-than-expected Chinese economic growth data. China's second-quarter gross domestic product rose 9.5% from a year earlier, compared with 9.7% growth in the first quarter. However, investors remained worried over the euro-zone debt concern which continued to dampen sentiment, while the euro remained under pressure after Ireland's credit rating was downgraded to junk status.