Breather for bulls

Today's major news

State Bank of India plans to scale up its staff intake; the stock rises 0.64%

Era Infra bags Rs509 crore worth of contracts; the stock slides 3.92%

Ashok Leyland’s February 2010 sales jump over two-fold; the stock rises 4.08%

Suzlon Energy bags 52.5MW order; the stock ends 4.78% higher

Infosys Technologies plans to hike staff pay; the stock ends the day 1.40% lower

Post-market summary

Global signals

European shares fell in early trades on Thursday, ahead of bank statements and digested the news that Greece is looking to raise €5 billion from bond markets to finance its debt. At the time of writing this report, FTSE 100 was down 0.04%.

On Thursday, all the major Asian indices closed red. SGX Nifty closed 5.50 points higher.

In the US, the investor would be eagerly waiting for data related to Initial Claims for February 27, Continuing Claims for February 20, Productivity-Rev. and Unit Labor Costs for Q4, Factory Orders and Pending Home Sales for January.

Indian indices

The post-budget upbeat mood that have been continuing for three days on a trot seems to have taken a breather today. On the back of mixed global cues the Sensex opened 13 points higher at 17013. It rose for another 11 points to 17024, which was the day’s high. Mid-session, it shed over 100 points gradually on selling in information technology stocks to hit the day’s low of 16888. The market however remained volatile with the Sensex ending flat, down 28 points at 16971. Nifty ended the day at 5080, down 7 points.

Market sentiment

Despite ending low, the advance/decline ratio, the number of advancing shares to declining shares, was positive. Of the 2,937 stocks traded on BSE, where only 1,690 stocks advanced, 1,157 stocks declined. Ninety stocks remained unchanged

Sectoral & stock screening

Out of the 13 sector indices, eight managed to close in green, while Bankex, BSE Oil & Gas, BSE Teck and BSE IT closed in red. Buying interest extended gains in BSE Realty that rose 2.50% followed by BSE CD, the consumer durable index, and BSE Metal that closed 1.62% and 1.56 higher respectively. BSE IT slid the most by 1.03%.

On the stocks' front, Sesa Goa surged the most—by 6.78%—followed by Hindustan Zinc, which rose 5.53%, and Sintex Industries that jumped 5.18%. On the losers’ list, Zee Entertainment slid the most by 3.11%--followed by Indiabulls Financial Services, which declined 3% and Oriental Bank that down by 2.66%.

Viewing volumes

Wind power major Suzlon Energy was the most actively traded share with over 1.14 crore shares changing hands on BSE followed by India’s second largest realty company Unitech (0.91 crore shares), industrial finance company IFCI (0.62 crore shares), steel maker Ispat Industries (0.54 crore shares) and natural resources major Reliance Natural Resources (0.36 crore shares).