Post Session Commentary - July 29 2009

Indian market closed on negative note following weak cues from Chinese market. The Chinese government has slashed gasoline prices, which led heavy selling into metal, energy and realty stocks in China. Consequently, China''s Shanghai index slumped over 7% during the trading. Market exhibited volatility on expiry of July futures and options contracts tomorrow, 30th July 2009. In addition, weak US index futures also took beating on the bourses. However, market minimized its losses during final trading hours on firm trading in European markets. Meanwhile, the government hopes to maintain a growth rate of the economy at 6.7% in 2009-10, same as the previous year despite the global economic slowdown. Finance Minister, Mr Pranab Mukherjee hoped that the stimulus provided both in terms of financial concessions as well as fiscal policy and the monetary measures announced by the RBI, will have its desired impact. The BSE Sensex ended below 15,200 level and NSE Nifty closed below 4,550 mark.

Market opened lower tracking mixed cues from the markets all over the world. Majority of Asian markets were down in early trading and the US stocks markets ended in mixed on Tuesday after trading in negative territory for almost all the session. The investor’s sentiments were dampened in the early trade on news that the consumer confidence data for the month of July came in worse-than-expected as it came in at 46.6 marking its second straight decline. Further, Indian benchmark continued to trade with volatility ahead of the derivative contracts expiry for the July series. However, market managed to recover and touched the green zone on some buying in key stocks, before once again losing ground. Market slipped sharply lower during mid session on huge fall in Chinese stocks. Finally, market ended lower on continued selling pressure over the counters. From the sectoral front, Realty, Consumer Durable, Metal, FMCG, Capital Goods and Pharma stocks contributed to most of the selling. BSE Mid Cap and BSE Small Cap indices also remained under pressure. However, IT and Oil & Gas stocks witnessed buying from these baskets.

Among the Sensex pack 23 stocks ended in red territory and 7 in green. The market breadth indicating the overall health of the market remained negative as 1558 stocks closed in red while 1089 stocks closed in green and 77 stocks remained unchanged in BSE.

The BSE Sensex closed lower by 158.48 points or (1.03%) at 15,173.46 and NSE Nifty ended down by 50.60 points or (1.11%) at 4,513.50. BSE Mid Caps and Small Caps closed with losses 54.28 and 91.06 points at 5,477.09 and 6,154.75 respectively. The BSE Sensex touched intraday high of 15,379.43 and intraday low of 14,888.41.

Losers from the BSE Sensex pack are DLF Ltd (6.58%), Tata Steel (5.77%), Sterlite Industries (5.53%), Sun Pharma (5.24%), Tata Motors (4.96%), Grasim Industries (4.03%), Reliance Infra (3.79%), HUL (3.23%), RCom (2.36%), JP Associates (2.20%), L&T Ltd (2.13%), Herohonda Motors (2.03%), NTPC Ltd (1.61%), SBI (1.43%), ITC Ltd (1.33%) and ACC Ltd (1.14%).

Gainers from the BSE Sensex pack are TCS Ltd (4.18%), Tata Power (2.91%), M&M Ltd (2.31%), Hindalco (1.28%), Reliance (0.84%), Wipro Ltd (0.58%) and Maruti Suzuki (0.55%).

On the global markets front the Asian markets that opened before the Indian market, ended mostly lower. Shanghai Composite, Hang Seng, Straits Times and Seoul Composite ended down by 171.94, 489.04, 19.98 and 1.71 points at 3,266.43, 20,135.50, 2,604.06 and 1,524.32 respectively. However, Nikkei 225 gained 25.98 points at 10,113.24. The Chinese stocks plunged sharply after the Chinese government has cut gasoline prices, which led heavy selling into metal, energy and realty stocks. Shanghai index fell also on profit booking after a five-day winning streak amid worries that banks may begin to restrict lending.

European markets, which opened after the Indian market, are trading in green. In Frankfurt the DAX index is trading up by 95.43 points at 5,270.17and in London FTSE 100 is trading higher by 39.84 points at 4,568.68.

The BSE Realty index lost (4.36%) or 178.35 points at 3,911.77. Housing Dev (7.13%), DLF Ltd (6.58%), Ansal Infra (5.82%), Parsvnath (5.45%) and Unitech Ltd (5.38%) closed in negative territory.

The BSE Consumer Durable index dropped by (3.13%) or 98.94 points at 3,066.04. Losers are Titan Ind (5.07%), Videocon Ind (3.93%), Rajesh Export (2.49%) and Blue Star L (0.78%).

The BSE Metal index ended down by (2.31%) or 289.01 points at 12,217.24. Scrips that lost are Tata Steel (5.77%), Sterlite Industries (5.53%), Ispat Industries (5.39%), Gujarat NRE C (4.67%) and Steel Authority (4.57%).

The BSE FMCG index closed lower by (2.03%) or 53.64 points at 2,584.42. Nestle Ltd (5.59%), United Spr (3.60%), United Brew (3.56%) and HUL (3.23%) ended in red territory.

The BSE Capital Goods index dropped by (1.75%) or 222.01 points to close at 12,440.16. Main losers are Reliance Industrial Infra (6.55%), Waqlchand In (5.87%), Suzlon Energy (5.29%), Everest Kanto (5.02%) and Jyoti Struct (4.98%).

The BSE IT index ended higher by (0.33%) or 12.42 points at 3,785.89. Scrips that gained are Rolta Ind (4.44%), TCS Ltd (4.18%), Moser Bayer (3.17%), Patni Computer (3.17%) and Mphasis Ltd (2.17%).

Wockhardt Ltd lost 5.61%. The company and its subsidiaries, announced the signing of agreements to divest its Nutritional businesses to Abbott, the global health care company.

Aurobindo Pharma Ltd dropped marginally by 0.98%. The pharma company has received the tentative approval for Donepezi! Hydrochloride Tablets 5mg and 1Qmg (ANDA 90-056) from the US Food & Drug Administration (USFDA).

Solix Technologies closed unchanged. The company announced that Ping An Insurance has selected Solix EDMS for database archiving, database sub setting and data masking for Oracle e-Business Suite R 11.5.10.

Ashapura Minechem Ltd plunged 4.89% as it is directed to pay damages of $24.16 million to London-based shipping firm IHX (UK).

HUL dropped by 3.23%. The company has reported a 2.7% fall in its net profit for the first quarter of 2009-10 at Rs. 543.19 crore against Rs. 558.20 crore in the year-ago quarter. The mark-to-market foreign exchange loss of Rs 32 crore has pulled down the net profit. However, the net sales were up 8% at Rs. 4,475.70 crore against Rs. 4,152.84 crore. The stock is now trading down by (2.78%) at Rs. 268.95.

Punjab National Bank ended up by 3.45%. The bank has posted a net profit for the period of Rs 8320.50 million for the quarter ended June 30, 2009 as compared to Rs 5124.00 million for the quarter ended June 30, 2008. Total Income has increased from Rs 45946.20 million for the quarter ended June 30, 2008 to Rs 61775.80 million for the quarter ended June 30, 2009.