Sensex, Nifty close at 15-mth highs on positive global cues

The Sensex and Nifty closed at new 2009 highs as well as 15-month highs today on the back of support from heavyweights and positive global cues. ICICI Bank, HDFC, Reliance Communication, Bharti Airtel, SBI, TCS and DLF were leaders, up 2.3-6.6%. Tata Motors surged 11.32%.

The Nifty started the day above 4,700 mark following good Asian and US cues. As the day proceeded and post the Europe opening, it gained more strength in the second half of trade. At the time of closing of Indian markets, European markets were up 1.4% each. Asian markets also ended 0.7-1.5% higher.

The 30-share BSE Sensex touched a new 2009 high of 16,035.50, before closing at 16,016.32, up 327.20 points or 2.09%, over previous close. The 50-share NSE NSE Nifty surged 2.19% or 102.50 points, to settle at 4782.90, after seeing a high of 4790. Equity benchmarks gained 108.32% and 112.31% from its 52-week low of 7,697.39 and 2,252.75, respectively.

Sudarshan Sukhani of Technical Trends said the markets could surprise and could certainly go higher than 5,000. "The PE on the NSE website is 22 plus but blowouts happen because of momentum. And I would be very surprised if we don't touch 5,000 in September."

"There is a very large head and shoulder pattern which is getting confirmed today. This was resistance at 4,740-4,760 level which is multi month; it is not the smaller one which we are seeing now. Now the pattern is that once that resistance is broken and the pattern is confirmed, we are looking at 7,200. The markets can surprise us and can certainly go higher than 5,000", he added.

Samir Arora, Fund Manager, Helios Capital said the markets were likely to be rangebound for a while but said he saw an upside soon and had a bias towards 5,000 rather than 4,000 on the Nifty by October. He added that he saw no reason for the markets to fall a lot. He expects midcap stocks to continue to do well, adding that valuations did not necessarily have to look cheap to buy.