The Hindu Business Line : Bank stocks gain ground; FII inflows help sentiment

The positive sentiment generated by results announcements for the latest quarter helped the markets register gains on Wednesday's trading, with the BSE Sensex putting on 65 points to close at 13672 levels, while the CNX Nifty added 0.67 per cent.

Buoyant trends in FII inflows, evident from the SEBI data also helped sentiment. There was active buying in the mid-cap space, with the mid-cap and small-cap indices faring better than the bellwethers on both the bourses. However, trends in stock prices displayed considerable sectoral divergence with IT, banking and healthcare stocks leading the gainers list while automobile stocks displayed weak trends. Market breadth was positive with the number of advances outnumbering declines.

Market movers

Stocks such as Bharti Airtel, the banking majors — ICICI Bank and SBI and L&T were major gainers in the index basket, while stocks such as Tata Steel, Bajaj Auto were key detractors. NTPC and Wipro were major gainers within the Sensex basket. Among other large-caps, IT stocks stayed in the limelight on the back of quarterly results announcements. HCL Technologies, with a 7 per cent appreciation, was a strong gainer in the IT pack on the back of quarterly numbers that bettered market expectations. Pharma stocks such as Cipla, Ranbaxy and Sun Pharma were upbeat. Metal stocks such as Hindalco and Hindustan Zinc gained on the back of positive trends in LME prices of these industrial metals. In contrast, the Tata Steel stock declined over 3 per cent on the back of the company's announcement of funding plans for the Corus takeover.

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New listings

Dish TV, the company that houses the direct-to-home broadcasting business of the Zee group, was listed on Wednesday as a separate entity. The stock closed at Rs 102 levels on the BSE. Among other recent listings, the stock of ICRA cooled off from recent highs, losing Rs 21 over the trading session.

Mid-cap movers

Earnings and company announcements were a key influence on mid-cap stock movements. Media stocks were quite active with TV Today Network buoyed by reports of a stake hike by Reliance Capital. A host of smaller media and production companies including Pritish Nandy Communications and Mid-day Multimedia registered gains for the day. Page Industries, Tech Mahindra, Texmaco were other strong gainers in the mid-cap space. Order wins from China buoyed the Petron Engineering stock. The markets registered a mixed response to results announcements. Praj Industries stock ended down, despite the company reporting a strong profit growth and approving a 1 for 1 bonus offer. However, mid-cap IT stocks in general were helped by recent results announcements. Sugar stocks such as Balrampur Chini Mills, Bajaj Hindusthan and Shree Renuka Sugars ended the session flat or marginally weaker, despite the Election Commission according its approval to the "relief" package to the industry, designed to encourage exports. Global sugar prices softened following this announcement on expectations of higher exports from India.

Most active

Hindustan Oil Exploration, Tata Teleservices, MTNL, IDFC and Bank of India were stocks that registered high trading activity. Stocks such as BASF India, Gabriel India and M&M Financial Services saw a significant increase in trading volumes for the day, relative to the weekly average.