Nifty ends above 3,000; Volumes below April '07 lows

01 January 2009

The benchmark indices remained on the higher side throughout the session on the first day of 2009 - the Nifty clawed back above the 3,000 mark. But the big concern was volumes, which was the lowest after a long time. Shares of oil exploration, banking, metal, capital goods, realty, and technology companies supported the markets. Midcap and smallcap stocks also saw a similar trend.

We have seen strong market breadth after long time. About 2004 shares advanced while 494 shares declined. Nearly 67 shares remained unchanged. Global markets were shut today on account of New Year, so there were no cues from that side.

Inflation was also bit of helpful in today's session; it came in at 6.38% for the week ended December 20 as compared to 6.61% last week. It was in line with estimates, as CNBC-TV18 poll saw inflation for the period under review at 6.36%.

WPI for all commodities stood at 230.2, down 0.2%. While that for fuel, and power was down 0.5%, Jet fuel prices were down 13% WoW. The same for manufactured goods was down 0.1% WoW. WPI for primary articles was down 0.2% WoW.

Samiran Chakrabarty, Chief Economist at ICICI Bank expects inflation to be at 2% in March.  According to him, reverse repo has headroom to go down further.

The Sensex moved back above 9900 level; it closed at 9,903.46, up 256.15 points or 2.66% over previous close. The 50-share NSE Nifty was down 2.51% or 74.30 points, to settle at 3033.45.