Indian equity market opened in green and stretched its ascent to end the day with a gain of more than 1.5%. After a nine day losing streak in which the market lost close to 7%, the rebound was generally supported by falling global crude oil prices in absence of result announcement from any index companies. The 30-share BSE sensex ended the day with a gain of more than 300 points. For the week ended May6, Sensex was down 3.2%.

The gains were largely led by the stocks from interest rate sensitive sectors, namely, banking, and automobile. Tata Motors, Hero Honda, M & M, ICICI, Axis Bank and HDFC were amongst the highest gainers from the 50-share Nifty index.

On the other hand some companies from metals and oil upstream, such as Sesa Goa, Cairn, Sterlite and indalco were amongst the biggest losers.

BSE Bankex and Auto were the highest gainers amongst the sectoral indices, rising more than 3%. BSE FMCG, Metal and Oil & Gas on the other hand remained the laggards.

The plunge in crude oil prices to its one and a half month low lifted the market sentiment given the implications higher crude oil prices have on corporate earnings through its double impact on inflation and interest rates.

Brent crude oil, the European benchmark, lost 12% in a week in a broad based sell off seen in commodity markets on back of are bound in US dollar.

Experts however believe, that, it may be too early to view the recent decline in crude oil as a trend. Says Rajat Rajgarhia, Director-Research at Motilal Oswal Securities, ?Today?s gain was a merely a response to a significant fall in crude oil prices. In near-term the market is expected to closely react to the movement in crude oil prices. However, the pace of inflation and the pace of global recovery especially that of US, still remain some of the factors that which can determine the market’s territory going ahead.?

The volumes in the cash and derivatives segments, at R11,749 crore and R1.15 lakh crore respectively, stood well below their six month averages of R13,460 and R1.34 lakh crores in that order.

Foreign Institutional Investors continued their selling as they sold equity worth R655 crores on friday, according to the provisional data available on NSE. In contrast, domestic financial institutions bought on a net basis R1018 crore worth of shares on friday. Due to their selling activity of last ten sessions, their net buying for 2011 now stands at $160 millions.