Post Market Commentary - Feb 18 2008

The market closed on a negative note as the profit booking across the counters prevailed. The market opened with hand some gains tracking the firm cues from the Asian markets but all of a sudden lost the momentum and fell to pare all its initial gains. The market From there on kept on hovering in the negative territory throughout the trading session. Reliance Power reported as the top turnover from the BSE as the company announced a bonus issue of shares. He company''s board will be meeting on February 24 to consider the ratio on issuing bonus shares. However, the Small Caps and Mid Caps remained in the limelight as most buying was seen from these baskets. From the sectoral front, the Realty index faced heavy selling pressures across the counters. The BSE Sensex closed lower by 67.20 points at 18,048.05 and NSE Nifty slipped by 26 points to close at 5,276.90. The BSE Mid Cap and Small Cap closed higher by 49.40 points and 134.22 points at 7,641.48 and 9,755.35 respectively.

BSE Metal index closed up by 80.04 points at 16,247.20 as Nalco (7.59%), Sesa Goa (5.87%), Ispat Inds (5.28%), Hindalco Inds (3.14%) closed in green.

BSE Bankex index closed higher by 60.43 points at 10,944.85. Gainers are BOB (3.86%), Axis bank (2.37%), Kotak bank (2.35%), IOB (2.08%), CentBOP (1.60%).

BSE Realty index fell by 290.32 points to close at 10,206.95. Major losers are Phoenix Mill (8.64%), Ansal Infra (7.63%), Mahindra Life (5.04%), Unitech (4%), Indiabull Real (3.09%).

BSE CG fell by 95.65 points to close at 16,322.65 as Alstom Projects (4.95%), BEML (3.28%), Suzlon Ener (2.65%), BHEL (2%), Thermax (1.66%) and L&T (0.80%) closed in red.

BSE Oil & Gas index fell by 96.18 points to close at 11,172.91. Losers are Essar Oil (2.17%), Reliance Inds (1.49%), ONGC (1.21%) and BPCL (0.53%).

BSE IT index decreased by 50.74 points to close at 3,829.24 as NIIT Techno (6.07%), Mosear Baer (4.49%), Karut Net (3.06%), Satyam (2.78%), TCS (2.24%) and Wipro (1.36%) closed lower.