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S. Muralidhar

Sensex swings

Volatility in the stock market continued unabated on Thursday, even as the key indices managed to close the day's trading session with negligible change over the previous day's close levels.

Though the numbers at the end seemed to indicate that the market remained more or less flat, intra-day the indices had witnessed sharp spikes both above and below the previous day's closing. However, overall, the sentiment through the session on Thursday seemed to be negative and it was only a late afternoon pick up in buying support that enabled the benchmark indices to close near Wednesday's levels.

However, the negative sentiment in the stock markets had not set in during the day's opening and the key indices therefore began the day on a strong note. As a result, both the benchmark indices at the National Stock Exchange (NSE) and the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) hit new all-time high levels during Thursday's session.

But, after the first spell, and except for brief encounters when the indices edged back into the black, for the most part they stayed in negative territory right through the session on Thursday.

At the NSE, the S&P CNX Nifty Index hit an intra-day high of 4,245 points. The index had hit an intra-day low of 4,188 points, but managed to stagger back to 4,223 points by the end of the session on Thursday. At the BSE too, the Sensex managed to hit a new high of 14,698 points right after trading opened. But, after falling to an intra-day low of 14,523 points, the Sensex closed the day 14,652 points, a gain of barely nine points.

Total volume of Sensex shares traded at the BSE was 1.16 crore and the ratio of gainers to losers from amongst these shares was 8:7.

Click here for table

The stocks that were losers from amongst the Sensex 50 included Bajaj Auto, which was a prominent gainer on Wednesday. On Thursday however, the stock slid by 2.3 per cent to close the day at Rs 3,008.

The other prominent loser was Hindalco, which has been weighed down by the lack of sentiment for metals stocks. On Thursday, Hindalco was down nearly Rs 7 or about 3.8 per cent at Rs 175.

Amongst information technology stocks, while Infosys Technologies was up marginally, TCS, Wipro and Satyam Computer were all losers. The Sensex counters that were major gainers included ICICI Bank, Maruti Udyog, Ranbaxy Laboratories and Reliance Energy.

As for sectors, the auto, pharma, FMCG and capital goods were a mixed bag on Thursday. Also, mid-cap and small-cap stocks, which have been in the limelight during the last few weeks, had also witnessed selective buying and selling. At the BSE, both the Midcap and Smallcap indices were down marginally.

Amongst other sectoral indices, the BSE Metal Index was down about 1.6 per cent and the BSE Bankex on the other hand was up nearly one per cent. Major gainers from the index of banking stocks were Centurion Bank of Punjab, UTI Bank, ICICI Bank, Oriental Bank and State Bank of India. With the strength from the gains posted by select public sector banks such as Syndicate Bank and Vijaya Bank and from other stocks such as BEML, IDBI, HPCL, HMT, Neyveli Lignite and Shipping Corporation of India, the BSE PSU index was also amongst the gainers on Thursday.

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