The market-breadth was very weak. For 1,083 stocks which advanced, 1,372 declined and 85 were unchanged. Of the 30 stocks in the Sensex, only nine advanced, while the rest declined. The turnover on BSE was Rs 3,530 crore, lower than Rs 3,836 crore on Tuesday. On NSE, the turnover was Rs 8,096 crore, slightly lower than Rs 8,177 crore on Tuesday.
Economic news
The strike of the employees of state-owned airline Indian brought to a halt operations and wreaked havoc in airports across the country today. The workers paid no heed to the government’s threat of a lock-out, and were unfazed by warnings that the strike was illegal. The airline flies 300 flights a day and carries daily 30,000 passengers on its network of 40 cities. The domestic carrier Indian is expected to merger with flagship of India and international carrier Air India to compete in the rapidly changing marketplace. Indian, in the last two years, has seen its market share decline from 42% to 20%.
The rupee retreated against the U.S. dollar as buying from importers broke its rising streak. In early trade, the rupee stood at 40.855 per dollar, lower than the previous close of 40.747.
Trading highlights
New issue Time Technoplast was the most-active stock with a turnover of Rs 636.30 crore followed by Reliance and Nestle. Time Technoplast ended at Rs 480.35 on BSE, 53% over the IPO price of Rs 315.
Advancers
Dr.Reddy''s surged 2.7% to Rs 628 and was the best performing stock in the Sensex. The stock rallied after Credit Suisse increased its rating to outperform from neutral. Satyam surged 1.7% to Rs 486. All other major IT stocks declined, though.
Tata Motors advanced 0.7% to Rs 646, Hindalco Industries advanced 0.6% to Rs 160 and Cipla edged 0.1% higher to Rs 208.
Decliners
SBI led the decliners, down 3.2% to Rs 1,289. The bank declined on worries of a possible interest rate hike by RBI in the wake of the strong industrial production data for April. Other banks also lost. ICICI Bank dipped almost 1% to Rs 910. The bank announced today it had moved forward documents to raise up to Rs 8,750 crore, or $2.1 billion, in India in a sale of shares as part of a programme to raise up to $5 billion both in India and the U.S.
Reliance Communications lost 2.5% at Rs 486 and Hindustan Unilever and Larsen & Toubro sank nearly 2% each to Rs 186 and Rs 1,871, respectively. Tata Steel eased from high of Rs 611 and was down 1.3% to Rs 595. Index heavy Reliance Industries slipped 1.5% to Rs 1,674.
Except for Satyam, all other major IT stocks declined. TCS was down 1% to Rs 1,202, Infosys lost 0.4% to Rs 1,980 and Wipro shed 1.6% to Rs 531. Cement stocks were also hit as Gujarat Ambuja dipped 1.3% to Rs 109 and ACC, which was leading the advancers yesterday, dropped around 1% to Rs 979.
6:30AM European stocks decline on Wednesday on interest rate fears.
European markets declined on Wednesday. The U.K. FTSE 100 index slipped 0.1% at 6,513.10, the German DAX Xetra 30 index declined 0.5% at 7,643.90 and the French CAC-40 index lost 0.3% at 5,879.90. National benchmarks fell in all 17 western European Markets that were open.
Advancers
Alliance & Leicester gained 0.9% after it upgraded core operating profit for 2007 at the top end of the forecast range as it also named finance director David Bennett as its next CEO.
Spanish clothing chain Inditex gained 1.7% after its first-quarter net profit rose 33% to 200 million euros, with sales up 19% to 2.0 billion euros. Profit of 185 million euros had been expected from the owner of the Zara and Massimo Dutti clothing chains.
Decliners |
