Post Session: Quick Review

It was another down session of trade at D-Street, where benchmark equity indices took a knock in the last leg of the trade weighed down by disappointing Q4 performance of index heavyweight, Larsen & Turbo (L&T), benchmark 30 share index, Sensex and widely followed index Nifty, lost over quarter of percent, to settle sub 20,100 and 6,100 psychological levels respectively.  L&T stocks tanked close to 6% on a worse-than-expected 6.9 percent fall in quarterly profit as interest costs jumped for country’s biggest engineering and construction company.

Slide of European shares also weighed on the sentiment of Indian equity markets even though regional counterparts fared well during the session. Prevailing caution ahead of testimony from the head of the US Federal Reserve later in the day tempered the equity rally in European Markets. Meanwhile, Asian pacific shares mostly ended positive as the Bank of Japan maintained its plan to expand the monetary base. The BOJ affirmed a plan to double the monetary base, pledging to adjust policy as needed after a jump in bond yields threatened to undermine stimulus.

Closer home, shares of the state-owned oil marketing companies such as Bharat Petroleum Corporation (BPCL), Hindustan Petroleum Corporation (HPCL) and Indian Oil Corporation (IOC) tanked on new fuel policy concerns. Under the new policy, the finance ministry has proposed shifting the pricing of petrol and diesel from the current trade parity basis to export parity basis, which would help in excluding extra costs like freight and various taxes and duties. Meanwhile, ongoing probe by Director General (Investigation) into the alleged cartelisation of state-owned oil marketing companies (OMCs) for fixing petrol prices also triggered profit-booking in these stocks. Stocks from Capital Goods, Realty and Oil & Gas counters were the major pocket of weakness.  Plunge in L&T mainly spelled pessimism for rest of the stocks in the capital goods counter. On the flip side, defensive Fast Moving Consumer Goods (FMCG), Health Care and Technology counters ended in green. Depreciation of Rupee to 6 month low augured well for software companies stocks, which derive major chunk of their revenue in foreign currency. The market breadth on the BSE ended negative; advances and declining stocks were in a ratio of 874: 1443, while 129 scrips remained unchanged. (Provisional)

The BSE Sensex lost 49.37 points or 0.25% to settle at 20062.24.The index touched a high and a low of 20,220.35 and 20,000.86 respectively. Among the 30-share Sensex pack, 14 stocks gained, while rest of 16 declined (Provisional)

The BSE Mid cap and Small cap indices ended lower by 0.83% and 0.82% respectively. (Provisional) On the BSE Sectoral front, FMCG up by 0.83%, Health Care up by 0.41%, Teck up by 0.22% and IT up by 0.13%, were the only gainers, while Capital Goods down by 3.67%, Realty down by 3.47%, Oil & Gas down by 0.98%, Power down by 0.69% and Metal down by 0.57%, were the top losers in the space. (Provisional)

The top gainers on the Sensex were Sun Pharma up by 2.90%, Bharti Airtel up by 2.25%, Dr Reddys Lab up by 1.84%, NTPC up by 1.48% and ITC up by 1.28%, while, L&T down by 5.57%, Tata Power down by 2.16%, Hero MotoCorp down by 2.04%, Gail India down by 1.34% and Sterlite Industries down by 1.25% were the top losers in the index. (Provisional)

Meanwhile, the inflation based on consumer price index (CPI) for agricultural labourers (AL) and rural labourers (RL) declined in April as compared to the previous month. The point-to-point rate of inflation based on the CPI-AL and CPI-RL declined to 12.32 per cent and 12.15 per cent in April from 12.64 per cent and 12.62 per cent in March, 2013.  

The index varied from state to state and in case of agricultural labourers, Haryana with 784 points topped the index table whereas Himachal Pradesh with the index level of 557 points stood at the bottom. Further, the index value recorded an increase between 1-13 points in 18 states and a decrease of 2 points each in two states.

Referring to the rural labourers inflation, Haryana state again topped the index table with 779 points, whereas Himachal Pradesh state with the index level of 587 remained at the bottom. Index recorded an increase between 1-12 points in 17 states and a decrease of 2 points each in two states.

Regarding the state wise inflation, Tamil Nadu registered maximum increase of 13 and 12 points respectively in both series owing to the increase in prices of food items including rice, jowar, bajra, fruits and vegetables among others. On the other hand, Meghalaya  and Assam registered decline of 2 points each for CPI-AL and CPI-RL mainly due to decrease in the prices of rice, onion, dry chillies, vegetable, fruits, tobacco leaf and pan leaf.

India VIX, a gauge for markets short term expectation of marginally lost 0.89% at 17.72 from its previous close of 17.88 on Tuesday. (Provisional)

The CNX Nifty lost 13.75 points or 0.22% to settle at 6,100.35. The index touched high and low of 6,147.60 and 6,074.45 respectively. 20 stocks advanced against 30 declining and one stock remains unchanged on the index. (Provisional)

The top gainers on the Nifty were Sun Pharmaceuticals up by 2.88%, Bharti Airtel up by 2.48%, NTPC up by 1.97%, Dr. Reddy's Laboratories up by 1.68% and ITC was up by 1.62%. On the other hand, L&T down by 6.05%, DLF down by 5.92%, JP Associate down by 4.23%, BPCL down by 3.32% and Bank of Baroda down by 3.28% were the top losers. (Provisional)

Most of the European markets were trading in red; France’s CAC 40 was down 0.43%, Germany’s DAX dropped 0.33% and United Kingdom’s FTSE 100 inched lower 0.24%.

Asian markets ended mostly higher on Wednesday, on buyers spree amid renewed optimism about the global economy following recent encouraging data from across the globe, ahead of testimony by US Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke on the economic outlook. Japan’s Nikkei closed notably higher as the Bank of Japan maintained its plan to expand the monetary base. However, Shanghai Composite went home with red mark as China Resources Power Holdings, a state-owned electricity generator, sank 4.5%, dragging power producers lower.