Post Session Commentary - May 5 2009

Indian market closed the highly volatile session on flat note as investors booked profits following steep rise in previous session with biggest one-day percentage gain in six months. However, small recovery led by some buying support was unable to help investors’ sentiments. Concerns about the financial health of U.S. banks and the potential for massive share sales also hit sentiment.

The market opened today slightly up and turned choppy soon after start on profit taking. However, the US stock markets on Monday continued its upward rally and ended significantly higher. After lackluster show in early trade, domestic bourses turned volatile with some ineffective trial to gather momentum. Further market continued to skip up and down on continuous bouts of buying and selling. Finally, market closed flat on some consolidation after strong rally in previous session. BSE Sensex ended above 12,100 level and NSE Nifty closed above 3,600 level. From the sectoral front, Reality, Metal, Bank, Capital Goods, Power and Consumer Durable stocks witnessed most of the buying from these baskets. Mid Cap and Small Cap stocks also gathered some favor during the trading session. However, FMCG, IT and Teck stocks remained out of favour.

Among the Sensex pack 17 stocks ended in red territory and 13 in green. The market breadth indicating the overall health of the market remained positive as 1622 stocks closed in green while 919 stocks closed in red and 94 stocks remained unchanged in BSE.

The BSE Sensex closed slightly down by 3.67 points at 12,131.08 whereas NSE Nifty ended marginally up by 7.90 points at 3,661.90. BSE Mid Caps and Small Caps closed with gains of 67.58 and 80.88 points at 3,718.87 and 4,162.58 respectively. The BSE Sensex touched intraday high of 12,197.88 and intraday low of 11,958.88.

Gainers from the BSE Sensex pack are DLF Ltd (11.36%), Tata Steel (8.80%), ICICI Bank (7.64%), Tata Motors (5.95%), Reliance Infra (5.86%), Ranbaxy Lab (3.90%), RCom (3.45%) and L&T Ltd (2.77%).

Losers from the BSE Sensex pack are HDFC (5.04%), ITC Ltd (3.94%), M&M Ltd (2.96%), Infosys Tech (2.84%), TCS Ltd (2.51%), SBI (1.65%), NTPC Ltd (1.47%) and Maruti Suzuki (1.13%).

On the global markets front the Asian markets which opened before the Indian market, ended higher tracking overnight gains in Wall Street. Data from the U.S. and China have shown an improvement in recent days. Shanghai Composite, Hang Seng, Nikkei 225, Straits Times index and Seoul Composite ended higher by 7.43, 49.03, 149.11, 45.64 and 28.56 points at 2,567.34, 16,430.08, 8,977.37, 2,074.35 and 1,397.92 respectively.

European markets which opened after the Indian market are trading in green. In Frankfurt the DAX index is trading up by 8.64 points at 4,911.09 and in London FTSE 100 is trading higher by 119.35 points at 4,362.57.

The BSE Reality outperformed the benchmark indices as ended up by (8.63%) or 192.90 points at 2,428.99 on hopes that lower rates will spur housing demand. Gainers are DLF Ltd (11.36%), Unitech Ltd (10.66%), Housing Development (9.36%), Sobha Dev (8.49%) and Penland Ltd (7.92%).

The BSE Metal index closed with increase of (3.50%) or 262.21 points at 7,751.68 on rise in metal prices on the London Metal Exchange. Scrips that gained are JSW Steel (9.95%), Jindal Saw (8.82%), Tata Steel (8.80%), NMDC Ltd (6.65%) and Gujarat NRE C (4.62%).

The BSE Bank stocks advanced by (2.36%) or 144.63 points to close at 6,278.16 on expectations of lowering interest rates that will result in boosting liquidity into the market. Major gainers are ICICI Bank (7.64%), Kotak Bank (6.94%), Indus Ind Bank (6.36%), IDBI Bank (5.37%) and Axis Bank (3.11%).

The BSE Capital Goods index surged (1.77%) or 147.87 points to close at 8,522.04. Main gainers are Suzlon Energy (9.93%), Praj Industries (6.52%), Usha Martin (4.91%), L&T Ltd (2.77%) and Reliance Industrial Infra (2.61%).

The BSE FMCG index ended lower by (2.15%) or 47.51 points to close at 2,161.23. ITC Ltd (3.94%), Britania Industries (2.05%), HUL (0.83%) and United Spr (0.47%) ended in negative territory.

The BSE IT index lost (2.11%) or 60.92 points to close at 2,826.12. Losers are Patni Computer (4.27%), Infosys Tech (2.84%), TCS Ltd (2.51%), Financ Tech (2.37%) and HCL Tech (1.78%).

Tata Motors advanced by 5.95%. The company said that it has received in excess of 2.03 lakh bookings for the Nano and collected almost Rs 2,500 crore. The company sold a total of 6.10 lakh forms.

Jubilant Organosys inclined by 13.34% after signing a research deal with Astra Zenca for neuroscience related drugs. The company focused on delivering novel drug candidates into the international pharmaceutical company''s pre-clinical pipeline.

DLF ended higher by 11.36%. The country’s largest property company is close to sell a 50% stake of its soon-to-be-opened 120-room hotel at Saket, New Delhi, for around Rs. 75 crore to a wealthy individual, who is not involved with any hotel chain.

Suzlon Energy zoomed 9.93% after the firm raised its stake in Germany''s REpower Systems to 76%, after paying Martifer 30 million euros last week.

L&T Ltd gained 2.77%. EADS Defence & Security and Larsen & Toubro join forces in India to forge a long term partnership in the fields of defence technology.

HDFC closed lower by 5.04%. The mortgage lender posted a better than expected rise of 20% in the fourth quarter profits. It has reported a net profit of Rs. 733 crore for the quarter ended March 2009 from Rs. 610 crore during the corresponding quarter.

Maruti Suzuki lost 1.13%. The company is looking at the option to launch a 660 cc car in the near future as well as to launch an executive sedan to compete with the Toyota Corolla and the Honda Civic. The company also plans to upgrade the Omni engine to make it compliant with the latest emission norms.