Sensex below 16000

Today's major news

Kirloskar Brothers bags order from GWSSB; the stock closed 1.88% lower

Subex in pact with a US company; the stock surged 3.54%

Hindustan Construction gets three orders worth Rs2,860 crore; the stock rose 1.48%

WABCO inks pact with Mahindra Navistar; the stock jumped 6.12%

BHEL wins Rs495-crore order; the stock closed 1.27% lower

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Post-market summary

Global signals

The European indices rose for the third day in a row on gains in banking stocks. At the time of writing this report FTSE 100 was up by 0.64%.

Asian indices had a mixed outing today. Hang Seng, Nikkei and Shanghai Composite ended higher, while Kospi and Straits Times closed lower. SGX Nifty closed unchanged.

Investors in USA are awaiting key data likes treasury budget for January, trade balance for December and crude inventories as on February 05, 2010.

Indian indices

Brushing aside strong positive cues from overseas markets, the Indian market closed lower. The Sensex opened flat and rose to touch the high of the day at 16141. Despite positive opening in Europe, the Sensex turned negative at noon and touched the day’s low of 15892 on declining risk appetite among foreign investors. The Sensex breached the 16000-mark again to close at 15922, 120 points lower, while Nifty closed 35 points lower at 4757.

Market sentiment

The market breadth was marginally negative. Of the 2,888 stocks traded on the BSE, 1,487 stocks declined, whereas 1,314 stocks advanced. Eighty-seven stocks ended unchanged

Sectoral & stock screening

Only consumer durables (CD) and realty stocks drew investor interest with the BSE CD up by 1.92% and BSE Realty 0.88 higher. Capital goods, public sector units (PSU) and power stocks were hit the most with the BSE CG, BSE PSU and BSE Power down by 1.21%, 1.07% and 1.04% respectively. The remaining indices were down by less than 1%.

The top three gaining stocks were Glaxosmithkline Consumer (up by 7.23%), REI Agro (up by 7.22%) and Indiabulls Real Estate (up by 5.22%). The top three losing stocks were Sun TV (down by 8.44%), Chambal Fertilisers and Chemicals (down by 4.84%) and Shree Renuka Sugars (down by 3.47%).

Viewing volumes

India’s second largest realty company Unitech saw strong investor interest with over with over 0.93 crore shares changing hands on the BSE followed by Sun TV Network (0.85 crore shares), wind power major Suzlon Energy (0.50 crore shares), leading integrated steel maker Ispat Industries (0.47 crore shares) and Industrial finance company IFCI (0.42 crore shares).