Infy, IIP numbers don’t excite markets

Today's major news

Infosys Q3 numbers beat market expectation; the stock jumps 3.97%

Bharti Airtel acquires 70% stake in Bangaldesh’s Warid Telecom; the stock falls 2.07%

Zylog Systems eyes acquisition in Canada; the stock closes 1.65% lower

Punj Lloyd bags Rs947 crore order in Orissa; the stock ends the day 1.03% lower

Octant Interactive procures USD2.5 million order; the stock slides 4.68%.

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Post-market summary

Global signals

European indices traded lower in morning, as commodities stocks fell. At the time of writing this report FTSE 100 was trading 0.42% lower.

Major Asian indices showed mixed trend. Nikkei, Kospi, Shanghai Composite and Jakarta Composite closed higher whereas Hang Seng, Straits Times and Sensex closed lower. SGX Nifty was down 53 points.

US stock futures opened lower on Tuesday, as investors look forward to data related to trade balance for November.

Indian indices

Domestic markets declined for the fourth straight session brushing aside better-than-expected Q3 earnings for Infosys Technologies (infy) that sets the tone of IT companies’ earnings and strong index of industrial production (IIP) numbers for November. The Sensex opened mere 8 points higher and soon turned negative. The day’s high was 17612 while the low for the day was 17392. At closing bell, the index was at 17527, 104 points down. Nifty closed 39 points lower at 5210.

Market sentiment

The market breadth, the number of advancing shares to declining shares, was negative. Of the total 2,991 stocks traded on the BSE, 1,850 stocks declined, whereas 1,037 stocks advanced. Sixty four stocks closed unchanged.

Sectoral & stock screening

Infy’s Q3 readings set the tone for IT stocks with the BSE IT up by 3.91%. The other two sectors that were up for the day were BSE Teck and BSE Auto. The remaining 10 sectors were down, with the realty sector (BSE Realty) down by 3.10%, the most for any sector, to be followed by BSE Metal that fell by 2.30%.

On stocks’ front, Thermax surged the most by 7.10% followed by Jai Corp that rose 6.33% and Wipro that jumped 4.89%. Among losers, Adani Enterprises slid the most by 6.35% followed by REI Agro that fell 5.47%.

Viewing volumes

Unitech, India’s second biggest realty company, saw highest trading with over 0.89 crore shares changing hands on the BSE to be followed by industrial finance company, IFCI (0.80 crore shares), Ispat Industries (0.75 crore shares), wind turbine maker Suzlon Energy (0.72 crore shares) and IDBI Bank (0.52 crore shares).