Post Market Commentary - March 26 2008

The Indian market closed in the negative territory on the back of profit booking across the counters. A lot of volatility was witnessed during the trading session on the back of expiry of the March 2008 derivatives contract on Thursday. This led the investors to take calculated steps in booking their positions. The market opened on a firm note tracking the mixed cues from the global markets but all of a sudden lost the momentum to pare all its initial gains as the profit booking prevailed. From the sectoral front, the metal index remained in the limelight as most buying was seen from these baskets.

The BSE Sensex closed lower by 130.66 points at 16,086.83 and NSE Nifty fell by 48.65 points to close 4,828.85. However, the investors showed their most buying interest from the Mid Caps and Small Caps space and they closed higher by 96.54 points and 154.32 points at 6,271.03 and 7,438.96 respectively

The market breadth remained strong as 1,733 stocks closed in green as against 978 stocks that closed in red.

The Metal index closed higher by 137.54 points at 13,745.18. Major gainers are Gujarat NRE (11.01%), Welspun Guj (5.54%), Jindal Stainless (4.05%), SH. Precoated (4.96%), Ispat Inds (2.86%), Maharash Sea (1.80%), Bhushan Steel (0.97%).

The BSE Realty index closed up by 29.13 points at 7,480.37. Gainers are Purvankara (22.77%), Indbul Real (11.68%), Omaxe (5.80%), Penland (4.14%), Parsvnath (2.94%), Ansal Infra (2.12%).

The Capital Goods index fell by 73.56 points to close at 13,794.04 as Kirloskar BR (3.48%), Kalpataru Power (3.22%), BHEL (2.86%) and Alstom Projects (1.9%) closed lower while Havell India (7.88%), Elecon Eng (6.97%), Lakshmi Machines (5.45%) and SKF India (2.93%) closed higher.

The Bankex index dropped by 69.54 points to close at 8,301.80 as ICICI bank (4.17%), Union bank (2.80%), BOB (2.19%), SBI (1.53%) closed in red while Yes bank (11.07%), Kotak bank (7.54%), Axis bank (4.34%), PNB (2.59%), Andhra bank (1.88%) closed in green.

The Oil and Gas index slipped by 84.24 points to close at 10,224.56. Major losers are Cairn India (2.52%), RNRL (2.49%), Gail India (1.67%), ONGC (1.11%), Essar Oil (1.09%), RPL (0.89%) and Reliance Inds (0.68%).

The IT index closed marginally up by 6.20 points at 3,692.55 as Mphasis (6.74%), Educomp Soln (6%), Aptech (5.09%), Patni Comp (4.17%), Finance Tech (4.12%) closed higher while HCL Tech (3.55%), Moser Baer (2.15%), Rolta India (1.56%) and Wipro (1.31%) closed lower.