Market for a breather

Today's major news

Rural Electrification Corporation fixes follow-on public offer (FPO) at Rs203; the stock closes 2.68% lower

Suzlon bags 8.7MW order from Larsen & Toubro; the stock slips 3.34%

Food inflation rise to 17.97%

Castrol India's Q4 net profit up by 71%; the stock tumbles 8.08%

Dishman announces strategic alliance with Codexis; the stock rises 0.77%

Post-market summary

Global signals

European stocks rose for the fourth straight session on Thursday and at the time of writing this report FTSE 100 was up by 0.34%.

All the major Asian indices closed lower. Shanghai Composite and Taiwan index were closed today. SGX Nifty closed 18 points lower.

In USA, investors are looking for key data related to initial claims, continuing claims, PPI of January and leading indicators of January.

Indian indices

At opening bell the Sensex traded seven points lower at 16421, but soon turned positive to hit the day's high of 16452. However, on news that Reliance Industries has to hike its bid Lyondell Basell, Reliance industries went down and along went the Sensex and Nifty. The low of the day was 16287. At closing bell, the Sensex was 101 points lower at 16328. Nifty closed 26 points lower at 4888.

Market sentiment

The market breadth, the number of advancing shares to declining shares, was Negative. Of the total 2,905 stocks traded on the BSE, 1,760 stocks declined, whereas 1,060 stocks advanced. Eighty-five stocks closed unchanged.

Sectoral & stock screening

In a rather dull trading session, realty, metal and oil & gas scrips were hurt the most; the three being down by 2.12%, 2.01% and 1.37% respectively. Consumer durables (0.52%) banking, information technology, teck and health care however held their fort. The remaining indices were down marginally.

The star stock was BPCL, up by 4.69%, followed by Apollo Hospital that surged 4.62% and Tata Chemicals that rose 4.51%. Among laggards, Castrol India slid the most by 8.08%, followed by Indiabulls Real Estate that fell 5.66% and Unitech that shed 4.63%.

Viewing volumes

Realty major Unitech saw 0.95 crore shares changing hands on the BSE followed by wind power major Suzlon Energy (0.75 crore shares), Rashtriya Chemicals and Fertilisers (0.34 crore shares), Ispat Industries (0.33 crore shares) and IDFC (0.31 crore shares).