Better than expected inflationary figures and continued buying action across bluechip stocks assisted Sensex to stay in the positive terrain.

Yesterday’s major performer realty hammered badly today while consumer goods, power, metal and auto stocks topped the gainers list.
 
BSE Midcap and Smallcap index surged 0.94% and 0.96% respectively.

For the week ended March 14, 2009, the country’s benchmark wholesale price index (WPI), inflation declined further to 0.27% as against 0.44% during the last week.

Amongst the sectoral indices, BSE Consumer goods gained 4.39%, BSE Power, Bankex and Power gained more than 2% each, while BSE Realty declined 3.51%.
 
Asian stocks zoomed on the back of better than expected US economic reports.

Japan’s Nikkei surged 156.34 points to trade at 8,636.33, Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index advanced 444.55 points to trade at 14,066.66 and Shanghai Composite rose 70.14 points to trade at 2,361.70. (1.07 p.m., IST).

At 12:54 p.m., the 30-share index, BSE Sensex, which opened at 9,739.93, up 72.03 points, stood at 9,822.32 after making a gain of 154.42 points.

It also hit an intra-day high of 9,861.81 and an intra-day low of 9,739.93.

Meanwhile the broad based Nifty stood at 3,030.95, up 46.60 points, after touching a high of 3,039.25 and a low of 2,982.25.

The overall breadth of the market was positive as it posted 1,366 advancements as against 956 declinations.

The major gainers in the 30-share index were BHEL (4.70%), L&T (4.52%), Tata Motors (3.38%), ITC (3.04%), HDFC (2.65%) and ONGC (2.36%).

On the other hand, Ranbaxy Laboratories (1.08%), DLF (0.74%), and Sterlite Industries (India) (0.32%) were the biggest losers in the Sensex.