Post Session Commentary - Dec 24 2008

The Indian market closed with a deep cut tracking the weakness in the global markets as well as the expiry of the derivatives contract today. The holiday tomorrow for the celebration of Christmas led the investors to stay away from the market to book new positions. There also lacks the unfavoring cues from the US market like - recent drop in the US existing home sales and prices, that showed that the new home sales data for the month of November declined 2.9% to an annualized rate of 407,000 units, which is the lowest level in 17 years. The consensus forecast called for new home sales of 415,000. The existing home sales in November declined 8.6% to an annualized rate of 4.49 million units, which is worse than the already-depressed levels seen in recent months. The consensus called for 4.93 million sales. However, the market showed a little bit of recovery from the day’s low on buying support from the banking scrips.

The domestic market continued its downward rally for the third consecutive day. The market remained bearish since the initial bell without much buying support. All the sectoral indices closed in negative territory except the bankex index that managed to closed with modest gains on expectations of the investors that the falling bond yield and lower rates would accelerate the loan growth as well as profitability. BSE Sensex ended below 9,600 mark and NSE Nifty below 2,920 level. From the sectoral front, the realty index was the worst hit as the investors heavily offloaded their positions. Followed it are the Auto and Teck index that also concluded the day with modest losses.

The government issued bonds worth Rs 22,000 crore to compensate the oil marketing companies by giving them 6.35% bonds maturing in 2024 to OMCs as compensation towards the estimated under recoveries. IOC has been issued bonds worth Rs11,975.51 crore, HPCL worth Rs 4,693.73 and BPCL worth Rs 5,330.76 crore. Shares of BPCL, HPCL and IOC closed with gains of 5.12%, 3.21% and 0.79% respectively.

Among the Sensex pack 25 stocks ended in red territory and 5 in green. The market breadth was negative as 1505 stocks closed in red while 911 stocks closed in green and 93 stocks remained unchanged in BSE.

The BSE Sensex closed lower by 118.03 points at 9,568.72 and NSE Nifty ended down by 51.8 points at 2,916.85. The BSE Mid Caps and Small Caps ended with losses of 30.21 points and 38.98 points at 3,145.60 and 3,600.20 respectively. The BSE Sensex touched intraday high of 9,653.42 and intraday low of 9,502.63.

Losers from the BSE Sensex pack are Tata Motors down (8.69%) followed by TCS (4.47%), Wipro (4.30%), ACC (4.14%), Rel Comm (4.07%), Mahindra & Mahindra Ltd (4.07%), Satyam (3.88%) and Bhatia Airtel (3.08%).

Gainers from Sensex are ICICI Bank up (3.27%) along with SBI (1.77%), Ranbaxy Labs (1.24%) and HDFC bank (0.65%).

The BSE Reality index ended lower by (4.78%) or 115.09 points at 2,291.29. Main losers are Unitech Ltd (12.29%), Housing Dev (10.68%), Indianbulls Real (6.42%), Ansal Infra (6.08%), Omax (4.97%) and Orbit co (4.85%).

The BSE TECk index tumbled (2.25%) or 44.01 points to close at 1,952.03 as IBN18 (7.68%), Tech Mahindra (6.75%), HCL Tech (6.45%), Balaji Tele (5.03%) and Mphasis (4.83%) ended in negative territory.

The BSE Auto index ended down by (2.25%) or 55.53 points at 2408.48. Major losers are Tata Motors (8.69%), Escorts Ltd (4.20%), Mahindra & Mahindra (4.07%), Bharat Forge (3.12%) and Bajaj Auto (2.75%).


The IT index fell by (1.86%) or 42.41 points at 2,237.14. Pulled it down are Tech Mahindra lower by (6.75%) along with HCL Tech (6.45%), Mphasis (4.83%), TCS (4.47%), Wipro (4.30%) and Satyam (3.88%).

The Oil and Gas index closed lower by (1.46%) or 89.43 points at 6,016.91. Losers are RPL (5.52%), Essar Oil (5.11%), ONGC (2.66%), RNRL (1.98%), Reliance Inds (1.50%).