Post Market Commentary - March 31 2008

The market closed in a deep red territory backed by the weak cues from the global markets. The market opened on a sad note and kept on hovering in the negative territory throughout the trading session. The Asian market which opened befor the Indian market were trading in red that led the domestic market to open with heavy gap down. Also the report by the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India (ICAI), that cited that the companies have to disclose losses on a mark-to-market basis incurred due to derivatives trades from the current financial year onwards (year ending March 2008) and this was as a precursor to making a new accounting standard mandatory from April 2011. This led to the negative sentiments among the investors in the market. From, the sectoral front, all the sectoral indices closed in red.

The BSE Sensex closed lower by 726.85 points at 15,644.44 and NSE Nifty fell by 207.5 points at 4,734.50. The BSE Mid Caps and Small Caps also closed lower by 94.97 points and 60.36 points at 6,427.82 and 7,841.62 respectively

The market breadth was little strong as 1,365 stocks closed in green as against 1,291 stocks that closed in red.

The BSE Realty index closed lower by 430.12 points at 7,554.80 as HDIL (8.68%), DLF (7.07%), Phoenix mill (6.04%), Unitech (5.31%), Ansal Infra (5.29%), Omaxe (3.88%), Indbull Real (3.56%) and Akruti City (2.70%) closed in red.

The Metal index declined by 631.63 points to close at 14,022.56. Major losers are Bhushan Steel (8.23%), Gujrat NRE (8.20%), SAIL (6.46%), Hindalco Inds (6.10%), Sterlite Inds (5.61%) and Tata Steel (3.29%).

The Bankex index fell by 482.63 points to close at 7,717.61 as ICICI bank (7.79%), Yes bank (7.61%), BOI (7.11%), Kotak bank (6.35%), HDFC bank (5.79%), BOB (5.77%), Oriental bank (4.87%) and SBI (4.81%) closed lower.

The Capital Goods index dropped by 446.42 points to close at 14,009.02. Losers are Siemens (6.77%), Punj Lloyd (6.48%), Jyoti Structures (5.92%), Crompton Greaves (4.35%), L&T (3.89%), BEML (3.88%), AIA Engineering (1.96%) and ABB (1.84%).

The Oil and Gas index slipped by 450.79 points to close at 10,016.82 as Essar Oil (7.94%), ONGC (6.68%), RNRL (5.41%), BPCL (5.19%), Reliance Inds (3.54%), RPL (3.37%), HPCL (2.81%).

The IT index decreased by 210.42 points to close at 3,547.61. Scrips that fell are HCL Tech (6.93%), TCS (6.80%), Wipro (6.32%), Infosys (6.30%), Aptech (6.03%), Satyam (3.40%).

From the Power index, Reliance Energy 6.19%, GMR Infra (4.73%), Reliance Power (4.90%), NTPC (3.55%), Tata Power (3.24%) and GVK Power (2.08%).