Sensex settles 54 pts up on healthy industrial output

The 30-share index rose by 54.28 points, or 0.32 per cent, to close at 17,195.81 points. In choppy trade, the benchmark shuttled between 17,252.52 points and 17,028.08 points during the day.

Analyst said the market opened marginally up, but later fell into the negative zone after the reports that said the US is probing whether investment banking major Morgan Stanley misled investors about mortgage-derivative deals.

The markets, however, bounced back from the day's low after the official data released today showed that industrial production grew in double digits for the sixth consecutive month in March at 13.5 per cent.

"The market saw a volatile trading session. It opened up and then went out on the US federal probing report, but cut the losses after the less than expected IIP figures came out. Though the IIP figures are short of expectations but are not at all bad reflecting the confidence of investors in the Indian economy," CNI Research CMD Kishor P Ostwal said.
The broad-based index of the National Stock Exchange, Nifty, closed 0.40 per cent up at 5,156.65 points.

The country's largest private telecom services provider Bharti Airtel settled at Rs 261.55, down 8.29 per cent on BSE."The stock was under pressure after the telecom regulator TRAI recommended a one-time fee charged from the operators which hold spectrum above 6.2 Mhz," Ostwal said.

TRAI suggested yesterday that from now 2G spectrum could be priced on par with what is discovered through the 3G spectrum auction and also delinking the sale of spectrum from issue of licence, as is the current practice.

Among the 30 components of Sensex, 19 ended in the green terrain while 11 closed in the red.|

The heavyweight RIL gained 1.39 per cent at Rs 1,082 and realty player DLF closed at Rs 297.05, up 0.69 per cent. Other Sensex stocks which closed with gains were Infosys (0.68 per cent), SBI (1.62 per cent) and HDFC Bank (1.10 per cent).
Among losers, M&M closed down 2.80 per cent, ICICI Bank by 0.13 per cent and Maruti by 0.41 per cent.Of the 13 sectoral indices of BSE, nine ended with gains.
In Asia, China's benchmark Shanghai Composite Index gained 0.31 per cent while Japan's Nikkei lost 0.16 per cent.

However, European stocks were in the red, with Britain's FTSE losing 0.11 per cent in the mid-session trade."The next few days would continue to see more news flow emerging from the global arena, which will continue to dictate the short-term trend of our markets," Ostwal added.