Sensex breaches 19K level on hopes of further reforms

The BSE benchmark continued to trade in the positive terrain on Thursday afternoon ahead of a cabinet meeting in which more economic reforms are expected to be taken up.

At 2.05 pm, Sensex was up 162.16 points at 19031.85. Similarly, Nifty was up 54 points at 5785.25 during the same time.

Also, strong cues form other Asian markets and good inflows of foreign capital boosted sentiment at the Dalal Street. Realty, banking and power stocks were the best performers.

The 30-scrip sensitive index (Sensex) of the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE), which opened at 18,939.75 points, was ruling at 19,070.78 points, 201.09 points or 1.07 percent higher in afternoon trade than its previous day's close at 18,869.69 points.

The Sensex touched a high of 19,087.60 points and a low of 18,939.75 points in intra-day trade. The BSE midcap index was up 71.18 points while the smallcap index was up 62.58 points.

The wider 50-scrip S&P CNX Nifty of the National Stock Exchange was ruling 1.14 per cent higher at 5,796.65 points, hours ahead of a meeting of the union cabinet that is likely to decide on opening up the pension sector to foreign investment, raising the FDI cap in insurance sector to 49 per cent from the current 26 percent, increasing urea prices and approve the creation of a National Investment Board.

On the sectoral front, the BSE realty index was up 80.24 points followed by banking index, which was 287.27 points higher, and the power index, up 39.30 points.

Major Sensex gainers were BHEL, up 6.11 per cent at Rs 264.90; ICICI Bank, up 3.38 per cent at Rs 1,088.40; Tata Steel, up 2.06 per cent at Rs 411.30; HDFC Bank, up 1.92 per cent at Rs 631.20; Bharti Airtel, up 1.88 per cent at Rs 270.65.

The main losers were Hero MotoCorp, down 1.08 per cent at Rs 1,830;Cipla, down 1.06 per cent at Rs 377.05; Mahindra and Mahindra, down 0.90 per cent at Rs 862; Coal India, down 0.78 per cent at Rs 362.10 and TCS, down 0.49 per cent at Rs 1,351.20.

Among other Asian markets, Japan's Nikkei was up 0.89 per cent while Hong Kong's Hang Seng was trading 0.15 per cent higher. Shanghai's composite index was also trading higher by 1.45 per cent.