Post Session Commentary - Dec 26 2008

The Indian market closed on a disappointing note tracking the more than expected inflation figures along with the sharp fall in advance tax payments by the Indian companies in the third quarter. Also, the statement by the officials of the ministry of finance that states that there is no scope for relaxing overseas borrowing rules as of now also does the spoil sport during the trading session. The advance tax payments by the Indian corporates fell by 22% to about Rs42, 600 crore during the December quarter over the same period last year. Apart from this, the weekly inflation figures fell to 6.61% for the week ended December 13, 2008 as against 6.84% reported previous week.

The domestic market continued its losing trend for the fourth consecutive trading session as the profit booking took a lead after a firm start. The domestic market had a gap up opening tracking the expectation of second stimulus package by the government to give a boost to the economy along with hopes of further rates cut by the Central banks as well as expectation of lower inflation that led the rally. However, the market didnot sustained at the higher level and took a sharp u-turn to pare all its handsome gains to close on the backfoot. The BSE Sensex closed below the 9,350 mark and NSE Nifty closed below 2,900 mark. From the sectoral front, the IT, Realty and Consumer Durables indices were the worst hit that closed with losses of more than 3% each.

Among the Sensex pack 25 stocks ended in red territory and 5 in green. The market breadth was negative as 1597 stocks closed in red while 866 stocks closed in green and 69 stocks remained unchanged in BSE.

The BSE Sensex closed lower by 239.80 points at 9,328.92 and NSE Nifty ended down by 59.6 points at 2,857.25. The BSE Mid Caps and Small Caps ended with losses of 38.92 points and 51.66 points at 3,106.68 and 3,548.54 respectively. The BSE Sensex touched intraday high of 9,706.38 and intraday low of 9,294.98.

Losers from the BSE Sensex pack are Reliance Infra down (6.10%) followed by DLF (5.97%), Infosys (5.33%), ICICI Bank (5.17%), M&M (4.65%), Hindalco (4.05%), JP Associates (3.98%).

Gainers from Sensex are Maruto Suzuki up (1.68%) along with Tata Power (0.50%), Satyam Comp (0.41%) and Ranbaxy Labs (0.30%).

The BSE IT index closed with losses of (3.92%) or 87.70 points at 2,149.44. Main losers are Rolta India (10.18%), Aptech (9.24%), Finance Tech (7.59%), Infosys (5.33%), Tech Mahindra (5.17%) and HCL Tech (2.91%).

The BSE Realty index tumbled (3.82%) or 87.36 points to close at 2,200.92 as DLF (5.97%), MahindraLife(4.88%), Parsvnath (3.16%), Omaxe (2.86%), Unitech (2.70%) and Ansal Infra (2.53%) closed in negative territory.

The BSE Consumer Durables index ended down by (3.58%) or 68.86 points at 1,852.91. Major losers are Titan Inds (4.47%), Videocon Inds (3.49%), Gitanjali GE (3.09%) and Blue Star (3.04%).

The Bankex index fell by (2.99%) or 160.42 points at 5,211.45. Pulled it down are ICICI Bank lower by (5.17%) along with Kotak Bank (3.89%), Karnataka Bank (3.34%), SBI (3.28%), Bank Of Baroda (2.10%), Bank Of India (2%) and Yes Bank (1.90%).

The Capital Goods index closed lower by (2.95%) or 200.77 points at 6,600.27. Losers are Punj Lloyd (6.24%), Walchand Inds (5.20%), Thermax (4.89%), Jyoti Structures (4.55%), BHEL (3.86%) and L&T (2.70%).

The Oil and Gas index dropped by (1.78%) or 107.29 points at 5,909.62. Scrips that fell are Aban Offshore (4.79%) followed by ONGC (3.96%), HPCL (3.63%), Essar Oil (2.93%), BPCL (2.70%) and Reliance Inds (2.35%) while RPL closed up by (6.34%).