Mumbai

Helped by gains in Reliance Industries and ICICI Bank, the BSE benchmark Sensex today closed above the 20,000-level, up 14 points, amid cautious trading before monthly expiry of derivatives tomorrow.

Sensex gained by 14.10 points to close at 20,005. The gauge touched day's high of 20,073.46 and a low of 19,964.64 with 12 of the BSE index components ending with gains.

It had lost 113 points in the previous two days with yesterday seeing Sensex shed 112.45 points on profit booking after RBI cut rates but also lowered GDP growth projection.

RIL ended 1.87 per cent up on hopes natural gas prices will be doubled soon. ONGC, which is also expected to be a beneficiary from the move, gained 1.6 per cent on good buying.

"With gas price hike to USD 8/mmbtu expected to go through, beneficiaries RIL and ONGC have seen interest building up," said Amar Ambani, Head of Research, IIFL.

ICICI Bank, which rose 1.11 per cent, led gains among bank space in 30-share Sensex ahead of its quarterly earnings tomorrow.

"Markets were range bound and action was stock specific ahead of January F&O expiry. PSU banks witnessed sharp declines after lower than expected quarterly result and lack of continuity in the future direction of RBI interest rate policy," said Shubham Agarwal, Associate VP & Senior Technical Equities Analyst, Motilal Oswal Securities Ltd.

HUL, ONGC, HDFC Bank, Cipla, Tata Steel and Wipro notched up good gains while L&T, ITC, Tata Motors, HDFC, SBI, GAIL India, Bharti Airtel and Tata Power closed with losses.

The broad-based National Stock Exchange index Nifty added 5.85 points to 6,066.75 led by stocks of realty, consumer durables and refinery stocks.

Private banking stocks saw good demand. Axis bank logged its fresh 52-week high and closed 1.70 per cent higher. Yes Bank and Indusind Bank also closed higher. However, state-run banks like Union Bank, PNB, BoI, BoB, Canara Bank and SBI

ended weak.

Asian stocks ended higher ahead of a policy decision from the US Federal Reserve, while selected Japanese shares also went up. Key benchmark indices in China, Taiwan, Japan, South Korea, Hong Kong and Singapore rose by 0.40-2.28 per cent.

However, European stocks were quoting nearly flat as cautious investors stayed away ahead of policy announcement from the US Federal and US growth data.

Moving back the local market, Cipla (2.69 pc), HUL (1.97 pc), RIL (1.87 pc), Tata Steel (1.75 pc), Wipro (1.72 pc), ONGC (1.61 pc), Sterlite Ind (1.41 pc) and ICICI Bank (1.11 pc) were major gainers in Sensex.

However, Gail India dropped by 3.35 per cent, followed by Tata Power (2.73 pc), L&T (1.92 pc), Jindal Steel (1.77 pc), Tata Motors (1.53 pc), Bharti Airtel (1.22 pc) and SBI (0.89 pc).

Among the sectoral indices, the BSE-Realty rose by 1.39 per cent, followed by BSE-CD (1.24 pc) and BSE-Oil&Gas (1.06 pc) while BSE-CG dropped by 1.24 per cent, BSE-power by 0.68 per cent and BSE-Auto by 0.49 per cent.

The market breadth continued to show negative trend as 1,219 stocks closed with losses while 969 ended with gains.

The total turnover dropped to Rs 2,074.56 crore from Rs 2,608.50 crore yesterday.