The Hindu Business Line : Support at lower levels helps Sensex remain flat

Taking cues from the Asian counterparts, after a seesaw battle the markets closed flat for the last trading day of the week. Sensex opened low at the opening session, but strong support at lower levels helped it to bounce back nicely to gain 100 points before selling set in during the last hour of the trading session on Friday. Sensex closed with a loss of 11.19 points to 13,860.52.The broader market Nifty closed at 3,983.4 with a loss of 5.4 points. There appears some value buying in small cap stocks, BSE Small Cap Index managed to gain 0.58 per cent. On a flat market the overall breadth of the market skewed towards the advances. The advances to declines ratio favoured the former with 1,663 stocks gaining against 991 stocks declining.

New listing

Tanla Solutions made its debut at the bourses on Friday. The stock opened strong with 50 per cent gain to its issue price of Rs 265. At close 32.6 lakh shares changed hands before it hit the upper circuit of Rs 379.80. Pyramid Saimira also made its debut on Friday. The stock listed at Rs 135 as against the IPO price of Rs 100. It ended at Rs 158.2 by close of the trade.

Buzzing Stocks

HDFC, the country's largest housing finance company stock was buzzing on back of the news that the company hiked the interest rates on mortgage loans by 50 basis points. The stock gained 1.9 per cent. Other prominent gainers in BSE were Sobha Developers, Ipca Laboratories, Wyeth, Engineers India, Sun TV and Indo Rama Synthetics. Among the losers Reliance Communication led the list followed by Gujarat Ambuja Cements, Hindalco and ITC.

Sector Focus

The oil and gas sector was the biggest gainer among the BSE sectoral indices. Market participants appear to bet on the steep fall in the crude price for the past two days. Gail gained the most, the stock adding Rs 10.5 to close Rs 275.5. HPCL, BPCL and ONGC were among the stocks to close in green. However, Petronet LNG and Essar Oil bucked the trend to close in the red.

ICICI Bank led the banking space with a gain of Rs 20 to Rs 910.4. HDFC Bank, IOB, SBI and Andhra Bank were among the gainers from this sector. Bank of India, Federal Bank, BOB and Vijay Bank shed values to close in red.

Auto in reverse gear

Except a few stocks, most from this space shed value. Mahindra and Mahindra shed 3.2 per cent. Maruti Udyog, Sundram Fasteners, TVS Motors and Ashok Leyland were all closed weak. The ones that tide the trend were Hindustan Motors, MICO and Apollo Tyres.

Capital loss

It was a mixed bag in the capital goods space. Areva T&D lost Rs 36 to Rs 1,008 and other losers were stocks such as Crompton Greaves, BEL, Kirloskar Brothers and Punj Lloyd all shedding between 2-3 per cent. The stocks in other side of the spectrum were Jyoti Structure, Carborundum Universal, Esab India and Ingersoll Rand.

Stock Specific Action

Sesa Goa surged 11 per cent on speculation that Japan's Mitsui & Co is set to sell its controlling stake in the company amid a bidding contest for the holding.

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Prajay Engineers announced that the company has entered into a Joint Venture Agreement with Sun Way City India Private Ltd (Leading property Developers from Malaysia), for development of one of our up market residential condominiums projects in Hyderabad. The stock gained 3.7 per cent to the previous close.

Gainers and Losers

MTNL, HLL, Grasim Industries, OBC and Moser Baer were gainers in the Nifty. SAIL, Dr Reddy, Zee Telefilms and Jet Airways were conspicuous losers.