Inflation & Airtel weigh IIP down

Today's major news

Healthy listing for Syncom Healthcare: the stock closes 17.13% higher

Vascon Engineers list with 5% premium; the stock closes 10.79% lower

Zain Telecom’s board accepts Bharti Airtel’s offer; the stock drops 9.22%

Castrol’s board to consider bonus issue; the stock jumps 3.02%

Four Soft wins WMS contract from Len Lothian; the stock rises 1.22%

Click here for more stories

Post-market summary

Global signals

European indices rose on Monday ahead of Euro zone finance ministers meet. At the time of writing this report FTSE 100 was up by 0.69%.

All Asian indices except Shanghai Composite closed lower. SGX Nifty closed 39 points lower.

US markets will be closed today to mark President’s Day.

Indian indices

In spite of robust index of industrial production (IIP) numbers for December 2009, the domestic indices closed lower on the back of weak global indicators combined with rising inflation worry and continuing selling in Bharti Airtel. The Sensex that opened 34 points higher at 16187 briefly stayed in green and touched the day’s high of 16227. However, it soon turned negative and touched the day’s low of 16011 after inflation figures were announced. At finish line the Sensex closed at 16038, 114 points lower while Nifty closed 25 points down at 4802.

Market sentiment

The market breadth was negative. Of the 2,869 stocks traded on the BSE, 1,634 stocks declined, 1158 stocks advanced. Seventy seven stocks ended unchanged.

Sectoral & stock screening

In a rather listless session, investors evinced mild interest in health care (HC), information technology (IT) and metal stocks. BSE HC was up by marginal 0.40%, BSE IT was up by slight 0.26% and BSE Metal was up meagre 0.23%. However consumer durable (CD), technology and oil and gas fell out of favour. BSE CD was down 1.49%, BSE TECk was 1.30% lower and BSE Oil & Gas fell by 0.94%.

Of the stocks that rose the most for the day, Jain Irrigation moved up 5.69%, followed by KSK Energy that advanced 3.69% and HCL Technologies that surged 3.63% for the day. Those stocks that were hit the worst includes Bharti Airtel that fell 9.22% followed by Bank of India that declined 3.94%, Shriram Transport Finance that dipped 3.49% and Religare Enterprises that was down by 3.23%.

Viewing volumes

The shares that drew investor interest includes Unitech, the leading real estate company, as over 0.69 crore Unitech shares changed hands on BSE, followed by the largest domestic telecom operator Bharti Airtel (0.50 crore shares), wind power major Suzlon Energy (0.37 crore shares), leading integrated steel maker Ispat Industries (0.33 crore shares) and Industrial finance company IFCI (0.24 crore shares).