• Investment World
• eWorld
• Catalyst
• Mentor
• Life
• Canvas
• Praxis
• Urban Pulse
• Brand Quest

Stocks

• Quotes
• SE Diary
• Scoreboard
• Open-End Mutual Fund

Port Info

• Ships in Ports
  
  

Archives

• Yesterday
• Datewise
• Resources

Group Sites

• The Hindu
• Business Line
• The Sportstar
• Frontline
• The Hindu eBooks
• The Hindu Images

Nath Balakrishnan

MARKETS remained lacklustre on Friday and ended the day with marginal losses. It bucked the trend seen in recent times when markets had closed the last trading day of the week with gains.

The benchmark BSE Sensex ended at 6584.32 points, with a loss of 4.97 points; the Nifty settled at 2055.55 points, lower by 6.35 points compared to its close on Thursday.

Click here for table

The weak trend was prominent in the large-cap space as well as among prominent mid-cap plays. In the A group list of the BSE, advancing stocks trailed declining stocks by 12. In other categories, which comprise mainly mid-cap and small-cap stocks, advancing stocks had an edge. The overall picture of 1,400 advancing stocks to about 1,000 declining stocks ran counter to the broad trend of sluggish prices. However, the traded value of advancing and declining stocks was more evenly matched. A downward trend was evident in stocks of auto majors such as Tata Motors, Mahindra & Mahindra and Maruti.

Stocks of cigarette manufacturers were marked lower following indications that the Government may impose a cess of 2 per cent. ITC, GTC Industries, Godfrey Phillips and VST Industries ended the day with sizeable declines.

Pharmaceutical stocks had an indifferent outing. Large-cap plays such as Dr Reddy's, Ranbaxy Labs, Sun Pharma, Cadila Healthcare and Nicholas Piramal closed with losses. A similar trend was evident in mid-caps and small-caps too.

Several stocks from the fast moving consumer products sector closed on a weak note. Stocks such as Gillette, Tata Coffee, Marico, Colgate Palmolive and Nestle shed value.

Stocks from paper sector sported healthy gains on a feeble day for the markets with the likes of Ballarpur Industries, Orient Paper and Tamil Nadu Newsprint figuring among the prominent gainers. Small-cap stocks from this sector, too, attracted attention.

A mixed trend was evident in the banking sector. The BSE Bankex was the only index to close with gains of note. It ended 0.6 per cent higher led by a firm undertone in HDFC Bank, ICICI Bank and HDFC. In contrast, stocks of PSU majors such as SBI, Punjab National Bank and Oriental Bank of Commerce closed marginally lower. Lower in the pecking order of PSU banks, gainers and losers were spread out. Andhra Bank, Indian Overseas Bank and Vijaya Bank, to name a few, notched gains, driven perhaps by interim dividend record dates. Bank of India, Canara Bank and Union Bank of India figured among the losers. IDBI and IDBI Bank (the two are set to merge, which would be effective October last year when clearances are secured) were marked lower, perhaps following the move to appoint the former's Chairman, Mr M. Damodaran, as the head of the Securities and Exchange Board of India.

A similar trend was evident among engineering sector stocks, too. Stocks such as BHEL, Siemens, Bharat Electronics, Kalpaturu Power, Kirloskar Brothers and Texmaco closed on a positive note while ABB and Havell's India were among those that were traded at lower levels.

In price action driven by company-specific action, notable gainers were:

Stories in this Section
Kotak Mahindra Bank makes pref allotment

Copyright © 2005, The Hindu Business Line. Republication or redissemination of the contents of this screen are expressly prohibited without the written consent of The Hindu Business Line