The Hindu Business Line : No defensive play on day of sharp fall

Kolkata April 2 Today's sharp fall in the market was largely bereft of a significant defensive play, indicating lack of confidence for the near-term outlook.

Not a single stock in the 30-share Sensex finished in the green. In the 50-share Nifty, GAIL was the lone gainer. In the Junior Nifty, only Aurobindo Pharma was not in the red. Among the BSE-A group shares, only 15 closed with gains, while 21 from the B-group shares were on the list of gainers.

According to brokers and analysts, as a sector sugar appeared to have bucked the trend. Some of the FMCG sector counters also withstood value erosion.

Mr Ajit Day of Dayco Securities said that the market has given an almost total thumbs-down to liquidity tightening and did not seek cover this time around.

Mr Arun Kejriwal, market analyst, also felt that there was hardly any room for defensive play in today's trading. "The market was simply worried as there was nothing positive round the corner."

According to Mr C.V. Desai of CD Equisearch, players attempted to cherry pick cash cows or companies without borrowings or companies that could possibly access overseas debt with relative ease.

According to dealers, the sugar stocks and some of the pharma and FMCG counters were spared because they have already been hammered substantially.

In the sugar sector, Balrampur Chini finished with a gain of 2.05 per cent.

Bajaj Hind gained 1.33 per cent. Among the other gainers were KM Sugar (1.2 per cent), Renuka Sugar (one per cent), Mawana Sugar (2.5 per cent), Rajashree Sugar (two per cent), Upper Ganges (3.35 per cent), Dwarikesh Sugar (4.35 per cent) and Thiru Arooran (6.7 per cent).

Procter Gamble, Merck, Nestle, Colgate Palmolive, Glaxo, Novartis and Castrol were among the stocks that did not lose out.

Among the Central and State PSU stocks, notable survivors were Andrew Yule, Neyveli Lignite, Dredging Corpration, HMT and Tamil Nadu Newsprint.

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