Financial Daily from THE HINDU group of publications
Wednesday, Feb 11, 2004
Financial Daily from THE HINDU group of publications Wednesday, Feb 11, 2004 |
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Markets
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Stock Markets Money & Banking - Stocks Bank stocks in limelight Our Bureau
Mumbai , Feb. 10 ON a day when stock market remained almost flat, stocks from the banking sector remained in the limelight mainly on the back of a strong economic growth in the current fiscal and upgradation of banks' foreign currency deposits rating to `stable' from `negative' by international rating agency Moody's. Brokers and analysts said the good third quarter results by most of the banks is also attracting interest in banking sector stocks. The overall interest in banking sector was seen from the rise in the BSE's Bankex Index by 1.41 per cent, the highest gain among all the indices. In today's trading, the BSE index gained marginally by 0.11 per cent, the BSE-100 by 0.04 per cent and the BSE 500 by 0.02 per cent. In today's trading there was a buying interest in stocks such as ICICI Bank, UTI Bank, HDFC Bank, Bank of India, OBC and others. However, the stock price of SBI declined marginally. The major gainers among bank stocks included UTI Bank (up 10.6 per cent at Rs 158.60), ICICI Bank (up 3.74 per cent at Rs 345.75). OBC closed at Rs 275.80 (up 2.78 per cent) and HDFC Bank at Rs 372.55 (up 2.45 per cent). Analysts attributed the interest in banking stocks to the Central Statistical Organisation (CSO) projecting 8.1 per cent growth of economy this fiscal. "With over 8 per cent growth in economy, the credit off-take is expected to grow and this would help the entire banking industry", said an analyst with a domestic broking firm. He said the growth in sale of automobiles sector is also partly due to the easy financing facility and this is also adding to the growth of most of the banks. Several FIIs have also started buying shares of banking sector after Moody's upgraded rating of the foreign currency deposits of banks from negative to neutral last week. Other than this, most of the public sector banks trading in single digit price-earning ratio is also being considered as positive for investment in select stocks.
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