Market recovers on FM’s speech

Today's major news

Larsen & Toubro’s units to borrow $2.2 billion; the stock rises 2.47%

Wipro bags contract from Punjab & Sind Bank; the stock declines 0.13%

Gammon India builds on winning contract; the stock slides 1.27%

State Bank of India may raise up to Rs20,000 crore via rights; the stock slips 0.33%

Ashok Leyland and Paramount ink a defence deal; the stock moves 0.86% up

Global signals

European shares rose on early trades with gains for Royal Bank of Scotland and Credit Agricole after they reported results, outweighing lower commodity stocks. At the time of writing this report, FTSE 100 was up 0.18%.

All the major Asian indices except Shanghai Composite closed red. SGX Nifty closed 6 points down.

US stock futures opened lower on Thursday, signifying a weaker start for Wall Street as investors continue to be cautious on US Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke’s testimony on monetary policy and state of economy.

Indian indices

Domestic markets ended the lacklustre though volatile session flat. The strong global cues helped Indian indices open higher with a gap-up of nine points at 16264. However it soon slipped and never saw that level through the day. In the mid session it made the low of 16167 points, but it soon recovered and went into positive zone following Finance Minister’s speech and optimistic economic outlook presented in the economic survey. However, as per the prevailing trend in the market over the last few weeks, the markets ended flat, down 1.77 points.

Market sentiment

Despite ending high the advance/decline ratio, the number of advancing shares to declining shares, was negative. Of the 2,899 stocks traded on BSE, where only 1,278 stocks advanced, 1,521 stocks declined. Hundred stocks remained unchanged

Sectoral & stock screening

In a dull trading session, owing to Rail Budget and today’s economic survey, capital goods (CG) followed by information technology (IT) stocks drew investor interest with the BSE CG and BSE IT closing 1.27% and 0.55 higher respectively. BSE Oil & Gas followed by FMCG slid the most by 1.05% and 0.83 respectively. The remaining sectors were either marginally up or down.

On the stocks' front, GVK Power & Infrastructure surged the most—by 5.60%—followed by Godrej Industries, which rose 5.38%, and Mudra Port that jumped 4.02%. On the losers’ list, Mphasis slid the most—by 8.43%—followed by Godrej Consumers Products, which declined 6.47% and Shree Renuka Sugars that was down 4.11%.

Viewing volumes

India’s second largest realty company, Unitech, was the most actively traded share with over 61.69 lakh shares changing hands on BSE followed by leading integrated steel maker Ispat Industries (32.36 lakh shares), wind power major Suzlon Energy (29.05 lakh shares) and Hyderabad-based infrastructure company GVK Power and Infrastructure (24.22 lakh shares) and IFCI (19.38 lakh shares).