MUMBAI, MAR 1: The `market-friendly' budget of finance minister Yashwant Sinha triggered another rally with the Bombay Stock Exchange Sensitive Index (Sensex) shooting up by 124 points on Monday. With speculators and foreign funds rushing for purchase orders, Sensex also crossed the 3,500-mark amidst euphoric boom conditions.Shares of pharmaceutical, software, housing finance and FMCG (fast moving consumer goods) companies were in the limelight on frenzied buying. ``These sectors have benefited from the budget proposals. The sops to investors and mutual funds also prompted market players to purchase stock,'' said a veteran BSE broker.With this, Sensex had gained 290 points in two sessions after the presentation of the budget on Saturday. On Monday, Sensex opened at 3447.50, touched the day's high of 3539.62 and fell below the 3500 mark to touch the day's low of 3417.22 before closing at 3523.98, showing a sizeable gain of 124.35 points over the previous close of 3399.63. The BSE-100 index also shot upby 52.78 points at 1559.73 from the previous close of 1506.95.On the National Stock Exchange, the S&P CNX Nifty index crossed the psychological barrier of 1000 points and closed at 1015.80 points, showing a net gain of 34.50 points from the previous close of 981.30 points. Other exchanges in Calcutta, Delhi and Chennai also recorded sharp gains.As expected, the market opened firm and despite end of account on the National Stock Exchange (NSE), prices moved up further as the session progressed. Scrips like Knoll Pharma, HDFC, Parke Davis, LIC Housing, Ranbaxy, Burroughs Welcome, Wockhardt, Pentafour Software and Satyam computer hit the circuit breaker after exhausting the daily upper limit at the initial stages. Tobacco giant ITC, Tata Tea, Hindustan Lever and L&T posted hefty gains on heavy buying support from FIIs.Bulls had taken control of the market right from the start and some pharma and software scrips exhausted their daily upper limit and did not provide any opportunity to FIIs to make purchasesin their favourite counters. Brokers said slashing of taxes on dividend income from mutual fund schemes and reduction in long term capital gains tax from 20 to 10 per cent came as a shot-in-the-arm to bull operators who indulged in allround buying.Some stock brokers said huge short-covering by bear operators who had created huge short positions in anticipation of a tough budget were trapped and forced to cover-up their positions on fears of further upsurge in stock prices in the coming sessions. ``The market was flooded with buyers. it was difficult to trace sellers even at prevailing higher levels,'' he said.Analysts pointed out that today's rally in the market was not across the board and some of the shares, mainly representing textiles, automobiles and petrochemicals reacted negatively to the Union budget as they were expecting some special measures in the Union budget. The scrips which witnessed downwards movements were Nocil, Bombay Dyeing, Arvind Mills, Mukund Steels, Colour Chem and IPCL whichreported major losses during the day. Shares of financial institutions like IDBI, ICICI and IFCI also declined considerably, they said.
