Post Market Commentary - March 24 2008

The Indian market made a huge turnaround towards the final trading hours of the session to closed with handsome gains on the back of selective buying across the sectoral indices. Though the domestic market opened with a bang tracking the favoring cues from he global markets but lost the momentum towards the mid session as the heavy profit booking prevailed. But the market gathered the momentum towards the final hours to close with good gains. However, the Mid Cap and Small Cap stocks were out of favor as heavy selling was seen from these baskets. From the sectoral front, the metal and realty stocks were the most hit as they faced heavy selling pressures while the Banking stocks remained the centre of attraction as the investors showed more buying interest from these counters.

The BSE Sensex closed higher by 294.57 points at 15,289.40 and NSE Nifty closed up by 35.9 points 4609.85. The Mid Caps and Small Caps closed lower by 158.57 points and 272.08 points at 5,805.53 and 6,950.12 respectively.

The market breadth remained weak as 2149 stocks closed in red as against 535 stocks that closed in green.

From the Sensex pack, Tata Steel 7.04%, Reliance Energy 4.61% and DLF 4% reported as the top loser while HDFC 7.73%, Wipro 5.88% and HDFC bank 5.31% reported as the top gainers.

The Bankex index surged 249.09 points at 7,744.35. Gainers are PNB 5.58%, HDFC bank 5.31%, ICICI bank 4.98%, Yes bank 4.08%, Cent BOP 4.46%, BOI 2.83%, SBI 2.67% and IOB 1.21%.

The IT index closed up by 52.33 points at 3,421.96 as HCL Tech 7.45%, Wipro 5.88%, TCS 1.66%, Infosys 1.45% and Aptech 0.90% closed in green.

The Capital Goods index closed higher by 130.19 points at 13,225.91. Major gainers are L&T 3.46%, BHEL 1.25%, Elecon Eng 0.40%, Jyoti Structures 0.29% and ABB 0.13%.

The Metal index declined by 710.94 points to close at 12,787.61. Scrips that fell are Gujrat NRE 16.95%, JSW Steel 11.98%, Welspun Guj 7.71%, Tata Steel 7.04%, Bhushan Steel 5.86%, Jindal Steel 5.45% and Sesa Goa 4.40%.

The BSE Realty index closed lower by 281.52 points at 6,806.18. Major losers are Purvankara 16.20%, Parsvnath 9.69%, Akruti City 7.49%, Unitech 5.24%, Indbul Real 4.57% and DLF 4%.

The Oil and Gas index closed marginally up by 13.35 points at 9,730.91 as BPCL 4.12%, Reliance Inds 1.93%, HPCL 1.32% and ONGC 0.99% closed higher.