It comes from saying no to 1,000 things to make sure we don't get on the wrong track or try to do too much. - Steve Jobs.
The motormen’ strike may have thrown Mumbai out of gear but the bulls are set to chug ahead. The engine of course is strong global cues. US stocks rallied on the back of positive economic reports. Multi-billion-dollar M&As are back, which can be taken as a good tiding as well. Europe too recovered from the Greek woes. Asian markets are mostly up, though Chinese markets are down following last week’s monetary tightening.
Volume may be hit due to the railway motormen’s strike. Suddenly, thousands of opportunities may appear to come your way but make sure you don't get carried away. Tuesdays are often infamous to start one way and end the other way. Despite the positive outlook for the day, the overall prospects appear to be rather murky in the near term. The key indices have been choppy and rangebound for several weeks and that trend may not change for some time to come. Jindal Steel and Syndicate Bank will announce their results today.
Meanwhile, the Greek storm has subsided, at least for now. Hopefully, the massive EU-IMF bailout over three years will help Greece take a deeper look at what went wrong. For the time being though, the rescue has soothed frayed nerves over a possible sovereign default. Still, some worries persist over the health of the other members of the PIIGS nations. The Greece issue also shows how the stimulus-driven efforts to tame the recession can boomerang. Moral of the story, heavy deficit-ridden government balance sheets need urgent repairs.
The euro slid as investors shrugged off all positives, including agreement over fiscal aid for Greece and stronger-than-expected manufacturing activity in the eurozone. Some fears are still lurking that the bail-out package for Greece may face political hurdles and whether the debt-stricken nation can stick to tough austerity measures.
FIIs were net sellers of Rs3.87bn in the cash segment on Monday on a provisional basis, according to NSE web site. Local institutions were net sellers of Rs1.07bn. In the F&O segment, the foreign funds were net buyers of Rs4.38bn.
Indian markets witnessed a sharp cut on the first day of May after an anemic April. Weak global cues, coupled with sustained selling in index heavyweights like Infosys, RIL and ICICI Bank dragged the NSE Nifty to close below 5,250. "Sentiment was dampened after China raised the banks’ reserve requirement by 50 basis points to soften record lending and prevent potential asset bubbles", says Amar Ambani, Vice President Research IIFL.
The euro weakened after three successive days of advance, and European shares fell as the US$146bn EU-IMF bailout of Greece failed to calm concern about the region’s growing debt problems.
The BSE Sensex lost 173 points to end at 17,386 and NSE Nifty fell 52 points to close at 5,225. Among the 30 components of Sensex, 24 ended in the negative terrain and 6 ended in the green.
Markets in Asia ended in the red; the Nikkei in Japan was closed, Australia's S&P/ASX was down 0.5%, the Hang Seng index in Hong Kong was down 1.5% and Shanghai SE Composite also was closed.
On the other hand, European indices were trading mixed, the DAX in Germany was down 0.5%, the CAC 40 index in France was down 0. 9% and the FTSE in the UK was closed.
Barring the Consumer Durables all the other sectoral indices ended in the red. The BSE Metal index was top loser; the index lost 1.8%, followed by BSE IT index down 1.3% and BSE Capital Goods index down 1%. Even the Mid-Cap and the Small-cap index lost 0.4% and 0.3% respectively.
Outside the frontline indices, the big losers in the broader market were Central Bank, Allahabad Bank, GMR Infra and Jet Airways. On the other hand, gainers included EKC, Tulip Telecom, UCO Bank and Torrent Power.
HDFC announced that the board of directors recommended sub-division of equity shares of Rs10 each of the corporation. The Board approved the proposal to sub-divide the nominal value of the equity shares of the Corporation from Rs10 each to the nominal value of Rs2 each. It has also recommended a dividend of Rs36 per equity share of Rs10 each for the financial year 2009-10.
The stock ended lower by 0.5% at 2800. The scrip opened at Rs2799 it touched an intra-day high of Rs2849 and a low of Rs2793 and recorded volumes of over 0.81mn shares on NSE.
Kotak Mahindra Bank announced that the board of directors of the company will meet on May 11, 2010 to consider stock split. Shares of Kotak Mahindra Bank gained by 0.5% to end at Rs741. The scrip opened at Rs740 it touched an intra-day high of Rs750 and a low of Rs734 and recorded volumes of over 0.35mn shares on NSE.
Shares of Glenmark shot up by over 3.5% to end at Rs279 after Glenmark Pharmaceuticals S.A (GPSA), a wholly owned subsidiary of Glenmark entered into an agreement with Sanofi-aventis to grant Sanofi-Aventis a license for the development and commercialization of novel agents to treat chronic pain. The scrip opened at Rs280 it touched an intra-day high of Rs302 and a low of Rs276 and recorded volumes of over 2.3mn shares on NSE.
Shares of TVS Motors erased early gains and ended lower by 0.5% to end at Rs96.1. the stock hit an intra-day high of Rs100.30 after total two wheeler sales grew 28% from 113,119 units in April 2009 to 144,689 units in April 2010. Domestic two wheeler sales registered 22% growth from 102,985 units in April 2009 to 125,471 units in April 2010.
Motorcycle sales of the company grew by 24 % in April 2010 with sales of 66,000 units compared to 53,235 units in the same month of the previous year. Scooters continued its impressive sales growth increasing by 43% from 18,819 units in April 2009 to 26,860 units in the April 2010.