Market expected to stay weak

After a late sell-off of 92 points yesterday, Wednesday, 23 May 2007, the market is likely to decline further as profit booking is expected to continue at higher levels. Global cues are not very encouraging either.

Since the past few months, it has been observed that local bourses are moving in sync with global markets.

Technically, the BSE 30-share Sensex has strong support at 14,000 level and on the upside faces a stiff resistance at 14,600 level. Similarly, the Nifty has support of 4,180 on the downside, while on the upside there is a near term resistance at 4,300.

The Nikkei slipped 0.11% by the close of morning trade on Thursday, 24 May 2007, on track for its first loss in four sessions as investors sold some recent gainers such as Sony Corp. after Alan Greenspan warned of a sell-off in Chinese stocks. Nikkei finished the morning session 18.77 points lower at 17,686.35. The broad TOPIX index lost 0.14% to 1,737.59.

US indices slipped on Wednesday, 23 May 2007,giving back earlier gains as investors showed some caution after the Dow industrials and S&P 500 index briefly touched record territory. While the Dow Jones shed 14 points at 13526, the Nasdaq Composite was down 11 points to close at 2577.

Among Indian ADRs, except VSNL all had a weak outing on US bourses. Patni Computer tumbled over 4%, while Infosys, MTNL ,Rediff, Satyam, Dr Reddy's, Tata Motors, ICICI Bank, HDFC Bank and Wipro dropped around 1-2% each.

Crude oil prices gained further, with the Nymex light crude oil added 26 cents at $65.77 per barrel.

In the metals segment, the Comex gold for June series gained $2.70 to settle at $662.60 an ounce