Listless session

Today's major news

Ashapura set for a bauxite booster; the stock shots up 5.00%.

Shipping Corporation of India set to buy three container ships for $225 million; the stock closed the day 1.24% higher.

HCC bags order worth Rs374.66 crore; the stock ends the day 0.30% lower.

Four Soft wins contract from Sherritt International Corporation; the stock jumps 4.83%.

Cox & Kings’ arm buys two Australian companies; the stock surged 5.09%.

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Post-market summary

Global signals

The European indices were trading lower on Wednesday, as commodity stocks fell. At the time of writing this report FTSE 100 was trading 0.40% lower.

Among major Asian indices, Hang Seng and Nifty closed lower, while Straits Times, Shanghai composite and Kospi closed with gains. SGX Nifty was down 17 points.

US stock futures opened marginally lower.

Indian indices

Indian markets took a breather after four successive days of gains. Taking leads from weak global markets, the Sensex opened even but soon turned negative and remained in red for the rest of the session. The day’s high was 17440 and the day’s low was 17323. At the time of closing bell, the Sensex was at 17344, 58 points lower. Nifty closed at 5169, 18 points lower.

Market sentiment

Advancing shares outnumbered the declining ones. On the BSE, 1,779 stocks advanced against 1,083 declining stocks. Seventy three stocks closed unchanged.

Sectoral & stock screening

Consumer durable and realty stocks saw some investor interest with the BSE CD and BSE Realty up by 1.45% and 0.55% respectively. On other hand fast moving consumer goods stocks were under pressure with the BSE FMCG down by 1.12%. The rest of the sectors were either marginally up or down.

The star stock of the day was Oracle Finance that was up by 4.64%, followed by Sintex Industries that surged 4.48% and Indian Hotels that rose by 4.23%. Max India slid the most by 2.89%, followed by PTC India that fell by 2.64% and GTL Infrastructure that shed 2.46%.

Viewing volumes

Ispat Industries saw highest trading with over 1.52 crore shares changing hands on the BSE to be followed by wind turbine maker Suzlon Energy (0.82 crore shares), India’s second biggest realty company Unitech (0.72 crore shares), industrial finance provider IFCI (0.33 crore shares) and aluminum major Hindalco Industries (0.31 crore shares).