Market Close: Bears Blister at the End

Last day of the FNO settlement saw indices to start in positive territory but as buying and selling kept indices in a ranged manner. Globally Indices traded in green which saw some buying interest by the investors . As the day progressed selling intensified in heavyweights and during the final hours of trading Indices slipped down by over 200 points but managed to recover from the fall as buying was seen at lower levels. Small and Mid caps were spared which too traded in red. Crude nearing $ 60 saw weakness in Oil companies. Few stocks got listed today namely Ahluwalia Cont which was had a blistering start as it list at Rs 58 and jumped over 500% on the listing day. ICICI's First source too list which saw little response from the investors.

Sensex ended down by 167 points at 14021.31. Weighing on the Sensex were losses in Grasim(2420,-5.02%), ACC (966,-4.17%), Gujarat Ambuja (126,-3.93 %), HDFC Bank (977,-3.70 %) and Ranbaxy (368.90,-3.56%) Losses were restricted by gains in Reliance Com (450,+0.77%), Reliance Ind (1417,+0.77%), TCS (1295, +0.70%), HDFC (1682.65, +0.60%) and NTPC (143.20, +0.49%).

The government has invited bids from public sector financial institutions and mutual funds for its remaining 10.27 % stake in Maruti Udyog Limited. The process of sale is expected to be completed in this fiscal itself as the last date of bidding has been kept as March 9, 2007. The sale is expected to fetch Govt Rs. 2,700 cr. Government has earlier raised Rs 1567 cr from selling its eight per cent stake in the company. No Big impact from govt stake sales as majority part of the stake is with the Suzuki with has around over 51%.. Maruit traded weak as it closed down by 2.43%.

A leading business daily reported that the plastic products major Sintex Industries and the Gujarat government have entered into an agreement for the construction of 50,000 economically weaker sections (EWS) quarters with monolithic construction technology. The proposed investment in the project is about Rs 75 0 Cr. Monolithic constructions are housing solutions designed by Sintex to address mass and low-cost housing needs. With the company's range of plastic products with manufacturing units at 8 regions across India. These broadly fall under the categories of water storage tanks (16% of 9mFY07 plastic revenues), pre-fabricated structures (47%) and industrial custom molding (37%). This deal should be a promising one for Sintex Inds and should add to the topline as well in the bottom line too. Stocks was battered which ended in red by 4% as investors booked profit.

Tech major Infosys is planning to acquire a UK-based SmartStream Technologies, which provides solutions to the financial services sector, for over £ 100 m. SmartStream, majority of which is owned by the US buyout fund TA Associates, has more than 70 of the world's top 100 banks as its clients and has 38% share of the transaction lifecycle management solutions market. If the deal is finalised this would be the first acquisition made by Infosys. SmartStream has direct operations across Europe, New York, Sydney, Beijing, Singapore and Mumbai which should prove good for Infosys. Also, with Europe recording a very strong growth in outsourced IT spending, it makes sense to go in for an acquisition to enjoy the first mover advantage. FNO expiry broght down the stocks by 1%.

Technically Speaking: The Breadth was taken over by Declines at 1799 while Advances stood at 813. The turnover for the day stood at Rs. 3,938 cr. Sensex have closed at a very important support, dot on channel support on daily charts. With the expiry behind us and a long March expiry, we can expect a fresh move upto 15k