Post Session Commentary - Apr 17 2009

The market erased most of its gains to end off the day’s high as profit booking emerged during final trading hours. Intense selling dragged the domestic bourses lower on the last trading day of the week. Earlier during initial trading, market exhibited strong gains on positive global cues and sustained buying by the foreign funds.

The Indian market took a sharp rebound from yesterday’s losses to start trading in green tracking firm cues from the global counterparts. The US stock markets on Thursday ended higher after a sharp choppy session backed by better-than-expected results from JPMorgan Chase and Google. Further, market continued to gain momentum on significant buying across the board. However, profit taking forced benchmark indices to pare most of gains during final trading. Lastly, market recuperates a bit after suffering a huge fall from its’ intraday high. BSE Sensex ended around 11,000 level and NSE Nifty around 3,400. From sectoral front, Reality, Bank, IT, Capital Goods, Teck and Power stocks witnessed most of the buying from these baskets. Mid Cap and Small Cap stocks were also able to gain market support. However, Metal, Pharma and Consumer Durable stocks remained out of favor.

Among the Sensex pack 15 stocks ended in green territory and 15 in red. The market breadth indicating the overall health of the market remained positive as 1362 stocks closed in green while 1194 stocks closed in red and 94 stocks remained unchanged in BSE.

The BSE Sensex closed higher by 75.69 points at 11,023.09 and NSE Nifty ended up by 14.90 points at 3,384.40. BSE Mid Caps and Small Caps closed with gains of 37.87 and 22.57 points at 3,472.60 and 3,951.56 respectively. The BSE Sensex touched intraday high of 11,339.47 and intraday low of 10,946.25.

Gainers from the BSE Sensex pack are L&T Ltd (4.21%), Infosys Tech (3.86%), SBI (3.54%), ICICI Bank (3.53%), Reliance Infra (2.30%), HDFC (2.25%), Grasim Indus (1.58%), Tata Power (1.50%) and Bharti Airtel (1.44%).

Losers from the BSE Sensex pack are Hindalco (5.18%), Tata steel (4.03%), Sterlite Industries (3.12%), Tata Motors (2.86%), Sun Pharma (2.48%), ITC Ltd (1.93%), DLF Ltd (1.75%) and Maruti Suzuki (1.67%).

On the global markets front the Asian markets which opened before the Indian market, ended mixed. Hang Seng, Nikkei 225 and Straits Times index ended higher by 18.28, 152.32 and 4.81 points at 15,601.27, 8,907.58 and 1,896.56 respectively. However, Shanghai Composite and Seoul Composite lost 30.2 and 7.72 points at 2,503.94 and 1,329 respectively.

European markets which opened after the Indian market are trading green. In Frankfurt the DAX index is trading higher by 41.06 points at 4,650.52 and in London FTSE 100 is trading up by 28.27 points at 4,079.57.

The BSE Realty index gained (3.136%) or 65.75 points to close at 2,166.49 on hopes that lower rates will spur housing demand. Gainers are Unitech Ltd (21.34%), Mahindra Life (10.74%), Anant Raj (10%), Parsvnath (8.94%) and Penland Ltd (4.64%).

The BSE Bank index gained (2.93%) or 157.16 points at 5,526.33 on expectation of a further easing of the monetary policy by the RBI with headline inflation nearing to zero. Scrips that advanced are Allahabad Bank (10.09%), Indian Overseas Bank (9.74%), Axis Bank (7.04%), Canara Bank (5.94%) and Federal Bank (5.94%).

The BSE IT stocks advanced by (2.92%) or 69.83 points to close at 2,461.60. Major gainers are Parni Computer (8.28%), Oracle Fin (8.03%), HCL Tech (5.95%), Infosys Tech (3.86%) and NIIT Ltd (3.70%).

The BSE Capital Goods index also ended higher by (2.57%) or 196.64 points at 7,842.15. Thermax Ltd (7.35%), SKF India (6.19%), L&T Ltd (4.21%), Crompton Greaves (3.52%) and Suzlon Energy (3.29%) ended in positive territory.

The BSE Metal ended down by (1.66%) or 114.36 points at 6,790.76. Losers are Hindalco (5.18%), JSW Steel (4.35%), Tata Steel (4.03%), Steel Authority (3.96%) and Sterlite Industries (3.12%).

The BSE Pharma index dropped by (0.80%) or 24.38 points to close at 3,019.55. Main losers are Sunpha Adv (4.94%), Cipla Ltd (3.61%), IPCA Lab (2.58%), Sun Pharma (2.48%) and Lupin Ltd (1.53%).

Unitech closed higher by 21.34% after the real estate maker raised $325 million (Rs 1,575 crore) at Rs.38.50 per share through a qualified institutional placement (QIP) issue route, enabling it to service debt and develop affordable housing.

Power Finance Corporation ended up by 6.95%. The Company has posted a net profit of Rs 3905.838 million for the quarter ended March 31, 2009 as compared to Rs 2954.006 million for the quarter ended March 31, 2008. Total Income has increased from Rs 13668.527 million for the quarter ended March 31, 2008 to Rs 18192.720 million for the quarter ended March 31, 2009.

Larsen & Toubro Ltd zoomed 4.21% as the company expects its order inflow to grow by 25-35% in the fiscal year ending March 2010.

Tech Mahindra lost 4.26%. The company would pay a sum of Rs 1,756 crore before the deadline of April 21 for acquiring a stake of 31% in Satyam Computer. Tech Mahindra also received the approval from the Company Law Board on Thursday.

Maruti Suzuki lost 1.67%. The company will invest Rs 1,200 crore to replace engines of existing models with a new light-weight fuel-efficient one, which will conform to a new national emission standard to come in place next year.