Post Market Commentary - May 30 2008

Indian market closed in green due to the strong buying support despite rise in inflation figures. The market got the momentum due to the strong GDP numbers. India’s GDP reported a growth of 8.8% for the fourth quarter ended March 2008 and the GDP growth in FY 2008 was 9%. This strong growth was on the back of strong expansion in the service sector. The Securities and Exchange Board Of India opened the doors for the university funds, soverign wealth funds, endowments and charitable trusts to register as foreign institutional investors. On the other hand, the government also gave relaxation on the restriction given on external commercial borrowings (ECBs) by raising the limit of borrowing amount by way of ECB and repatriate to $50mn as against $20mn earlier. It has also allowed the infrastructure firms to borrow up to $100mn.

The domestic market opened higher tracking the favoring cues from the US Markets and was trading firm due to buying in key stocks and Nifty June futures series which settled at premium. It touched negative territory for a moment during first half of the trading session. Further investors kept the market well positioned in positive territory till the end of session. From the sectoral front capital goods and metal stocks were in limelight as most of the buying was seen from these baskets. The market breadth was negative as 1008 stocks closed in green while 1701stocks closed in red and 58 stocks remained unchanged.

India’s Inflation stood at 8.1 percent for the week ended May 17, compared to 7.82 percent previous week

The BSE Sensex closed higher by 99.31 points at 16,415.57 and NSE Nifty went up by 34.80 points to close at 4,870.10. The BSE Mid Cap ended up by 18.78 points at 6760.54 while Small Cap fell by 48.03 points to close at 8,133.04. The BSE Sensex touched intraday high of 16,540.49 and intraday low of 16,314.99.

Gainers from the BSE are HDFC (5.59%), Ranbaxy Lab Ltd (4.77%), BHEL (3.89%), Infosys Tech (3.64%), TCS Ltd (3.41%), L&T Ltd (2.53%), Bharti Airtel (2.05%), ONGC Ltd (1.24%) and Hindalco (1.24%).

The Capital Goods index was up by 323.61 points to close at 13,150.64. Major gainers are Aia engineer (5.95%), Kalpat Power (5.79%), BHEL (3.89%), Praj Industries (3.71%), Punj Lloyd (3.23%), L&T Ltd (3.19%) and ABB Ltd (2.87%).

The Metal index ended higher by 235.18 points at 16,914.63 as Bhushan Steels was up by (8.67%) followed by Jindal Saw by (5.15%), Sesa Goa (3.83%), Welspan Gujarat by (3.29%), Sterlite Industries (2.83%) and Jindal Steel by (2.17%).

The IT index advanced by 96.03 points to close at 4,643.79. Gainers are NIIT Ltd (4.35%), Infosys Tech (3.64%), TCS Ltd (3.41%), Tech Mahindra (2.98%), Mphasisi Ltd (1.69%), and Moser Baer (1.59%).

The Oil & Gas index decreased by 174.57 points to close at 10,396.85. Losers are Essar Oil Ltd (2.78%), Reliance (2.63%), HPCL (1.94%), Reliance Nat Resources (1.65%), Reliance Pet (1.02%) and Cairn India (0.64%).

Power index closed lower by 112.60 points at 2,936.24, losers are Reliance Power (42.41%), GVK Power Inf (1.85%), Tornt Power (1.45%), Reliance Infra (1.25%), GMR Infrast (0.89%), Seimens Ltd (0.84%), and Tata Power (0.65%).