Its bears turn today

Today's major news

State Bank of India expands its business in North India; the stock closes 2.45% lower

Shipping Corporation of India in line for a 20% government stake sale: the stock ends the day 2.05% lower

Simmonds Marshall’s stock split news: the stock jumps 10%

Rishi Laser shines on winning export order; the stock rises 0.36%

ACC’s CY2009 net profit zooms by 32%; the stock slid 2.90%

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Post-market summary

Global signals

The European markets extended their losses on Thursday, as banking shares dropped the most led by Deutsche Bank and Santander. At the time of writing this report FTSE 100 was down by 0.86%.

Among major Asian indices, all the indices closes lower except Kospi that closed marginally higher. SGX Nifty fell 95 points.

US stock futures opened marginal lower ahead of data for first-time claims for jobless benefits for the week ended January 30 and data related to December factory orders.

Indian indices

It seems if bears and bulls are taking turns to leave investors restive. Where the bulls pushed the bears to the wall yesterday, today bears took the turn. On glum cues from overseas markets, the Sensex opened mere four points higher, but soon turned negative and continued to slid all along the day. Realty and metal bears stocks pushed the index to the day’s low of 16189. The day’s high was 16508. At closing bell, the Sensex was at 16496, 271 points lower. Nifty closed at 4845, 86 points lower.

Sensex sentiment

The declining stocks outnumbered the advancing stocks. Of the 2,899 stocks traded on the BSE, 2003 stocks declined, whereas 836 stocks advanced. Sixty stocks closed unchanged.

Sectoral & stock screening

Bears drubbed all the sectors with the interest rate sensitive realty sector tumbling the most, posing a loss of 3.89%. After yesterday’s rally, metal stocks were trapped in profit booking pushed the sector index 3.36% down. Fast moving consumer goods (FMCG) the defensive sector stood least affected among the 13 sector indices.

The star stock for the day was Procter & Gamble that was up by 5.55% to be followed by GAIL India that surged 3.14% and MMTC that rose 1.67%. Among laggards Jaiprakash Hydro slid the most by 6.54%, followed by Aluminum major Hindalco that fell 6.37% and Reliance Natural Resources that shed 6.12%.

Viewing volumes

Industrial finance company IFCI saw highest trading with over 0.73 crore shares changing hands on the BSE followed by realty major Unitech (0.70 crore shares), wind turbine major Suzlon Energy (0.61 crore shares), Reliance Natural Resources (0.58 crore shares) and Ispat Industries (0.41 crore shares).