The Hindu Business Line : Oil and gas sector bucks the negative trend

In a highly volatile trading session, the Sensex closed in the red for the third successive day. At close, the Sensex had shed 99.72 points (or 0.70 per cent) to settle at 14,090.98 points and the Nifty also closed weaker by 13.75 points (or 0.34 per cent) to end at 4,044.55 points.

The volatility was evident from the intra-day swing of 406 points between the Sensex high and low for the day. In the Sensex and Nifty, the uptrend in pivotals such as ONGC, Reliance Industries and Bharti Airtel appears to have limited the fall in the indices. According to provisional FII (BSE and NSE) turnover, they were net sellers to the tune of Rs 385.1 crore during the day's trading.

On a relative basis, the BSE Midcap and SmallCap Index shed lower than the broad market during the day, after taking it on the chin on Monday's trading.

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All eyes will, however, be trained on the opening of market hours on Wednesday. After trading hours, the Reserve Bank of India announced a hike the cash reserve ratio (CRR) by 0.50 per cent to 6 per cent in two tranches, which is to come into effect on February 17 and March 3. The RBI move has been announced to keep inflation in check.

Sector focus

Practically all the BSE sectoral indices ended in the negative territory. The only index that bucked the trend was oil and gas, which perked up by 1.10 per cent. The sectors that shed more than 1 per cent during the day's trading were metals, banking and IT.

The Hindalco's acquisition of the US-based Novelis continued to weigh heavily on the stock and also impacted the sector as a whole. The other metal stocks such as Hindustan Zinc, Tata Steel and Jindal Stainless also ended on a weak note.

Among the banking stocks, the major losers were UTI Bank, Andhra Bank, HDFC Bank, Punjab National Bank, IOB and Canara Bank. The banks, which bucked the trend, were Federal Bank, Allahabad Bank and Union Bank of India.

Some of the IT stocks ended in the negative territory, with prominent losers being Infosys Technologies, MphasiS and Satyam. The ones that ended on a positive note were TCS, Tech Mahindra and Wipro.

Stock specific action

The markets continued to take a bearish view on the Novelis acquisition of Hindalco, with the stock dipped by 4.92 per cent to settle at Rs 142.10.

Bharti Airtel, which fell on Monday's trading after the Vodafone-Hutch Essar deal, was back in favour. The stock moved up by 1.5 per cent to close for the day at Rs 739.60.

Technocraft Industries, the stock, which closed at Rs 100.9 on, the day of listing on Monday perked up 10.20 per cent to settle at Rs 111.20.

Other key gainers during the day were Syngenta, Pritish Nandy Communications, Tulip IT, Telephoto Entertainment and Tyche Peripherals. The significant losers were Balaji Telefilms, Mahindra Ugine, Ador Welding, Micro Inks and NIIT.