Markets snap 2-day rally; oil & gas, IT, realty, cement lose

11 June 2009

It was a consolidation day for the markets. The benchmark indices snapped a two-day winning streak and ended the session marginally lower. The sell-off in oil & gas, technology, realty, cement, private power counters and in stocks like BHEL, SBI and HUL kept the Nifty below the 4650 level.

On the positive side, telecom (barring Reliance Communication) and metal stocks, NTPC and HDFC Bank helped the benchmark indices.

The 30-share BSE Sensex closed at 15,411.47, down 55.34 points or 0.36%, after seeing a swing of 328 points between an intraday high of 15,568.74 and low of 15,240.73. The 50-share NSE Nifty slipped below the 4600 mark during the day. It witnessed a swing of 93.4 points between day's high/low of 4679.55 and 4586.15, before closing at 4637.70, down 0.38% or 17.55 points.

Amitabh Chakraborty, President (equity) of Religare Capital Markets said the volume was considerably down today and advance/decline ratio was clearly indicating some kind of fatigue. He said, "Probably midcaps will start moving again from the next week onwards. The market will try to move towards 4,700 on the Nifty or 16,000 on the Sensex. Everyone is talking about some correction after the Budget but probably we may see a correction before the Budget itself. But that is quite healthy according to me."

Sectoral Indices
Cement stocks were under pressure in today's trade. ACC and Ambuja Cements slipped over 4%. Binani Cement, Heidelberg Cement, India Cements, JK Cement, JK Lakshmi Cement, Madras Cements, Mangalam Cement and Prism Cement were down 2-8%. Grasim Industries fell 1%.

UltraTech Cement lost 4.02% and its volumes increased 651.67% to 292,619 shares, as compared to its 5-day average of 38,929 shares. About 1.4 crore shares of the company changed hands on the NSE at Rs 725 per share, as L&T sold its entire 11.49% stake in UltraTech to clutch of investors. Larsen and Toubro was down just 0.5%.