Sensex closes below 17K

Today's major news

Pratibha Industries secures contract from UP Jal Nigam; the stock closed 16.94% higher.

Legal notice to Mahindra Satyam for refund of Rs1,230.4 crore; the stock ends 1.38% lower.

Mahindra Lifespace in race to build new city in Mauritius; the stock closed 0.30% lower.

Valecha Engineering bags projects worth Rs110.00 crore; the stock closed 3.55% lower.

Tata Motors raises Rs264 crore in new FD scheme; the stock ends 3.14% higher.

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Global signals

After yesterday’s fall European stocks opened marginally higher today. All the major European indices are trading in green at the time of writing this report with FTSE 100 trading at 5357, 11 points higher than its previous close.

Major Asian indices that opened weak didn’t manage to recover the losses, except for Shanghai Composite, Jakarta Composite and KOSPI Index that rose marginally. SGX Nifty that opened strong ended the highly volatile day with a marginal loss of 1.50 points.

Indian indices

Sensex ended the day with the loss of 52 points or 0.30% down. On the back of weak performance by Asian indices, Sensex stayed in red zone for most part of the day and failed to come out of red column.

The bellwether slipped below the psychologically important 17K level. The Sensex that opened 19 points lower at 17032 soon slumped from the level to see the low of 16958. However it went to make the high of 17099 before closing at 16999 that is marginally lower by 0.30% or 52 points. Today, Nifty managed to stay above 5000-level all through the day and ended the day at 5055, down by 8 points.

Sensex sentiment

Market breadth, the number of advancing shares to declining ones, was almost positive as out of 2,846 stocks traded on the BSE, 1,598 stocks advanced, whereas 1,166 stocks declined. Eighty two stocks closed unchanged.

Sectoral & stock screening

Of the 13 sectoral indices on BSE, except BSE Metal that was up by 1.20% the rest of the 12 sectoral indices were either up or down by less than 1%. BSE FMCG, BSE IT, BSE Realty, BSE CD, BSE HC, BSE TECk and BSE Auto were up by less than 1% each, whereas BSE Bankex, BSE CG, BSE PSU and BSE Power BSE Oil & Gas posted losses of less than 1% each.

On stocks’ front, Pantaloon Retail topped the chart surging by 5.76% for the day to be followed by GE Shipping (up 4.88%) and GTL Infrastructure that rose by 4.62%. Sintex Industries, Adani Enterprises, Ispat Industries, Oriental Bank of Commerce, JSW Steel and IDFC were up by 4% each. Among losers, Mphasis slid the most by 4.94%, followed by Exide Enterprises that fell by 4.86% and Reliance Infrastructure that was down by 3.20%.

Viewing volumes

On turnover front, Over 1.22 crore shares of Suzlon Energy changed hands on BSE followed by Ispat Industries (1.15 crore shares), Unitech (0.84 crore shares), GTL Infrastructure (0.74 crore shares) and IFCI (0.64 crore shares).