While the Nifty's surge by 81 points (the BSE sensex was up by about 244 points) reflects the upturn witnessed by the market on Tuesday in the wake of the CRR cut announced by the RBI, a closer reading of the Nifty stocks shows that much of the momentum was contributed by a handful of stocks.

While 38 of the 50 Nifty stocks had advanced, the momentum was not uniform across the gainers or across even the same sector, making one wonder if it's too early to cheer.

While sectors like software virtually missed out the rally, the gains were not uniform among some of the sectors like automobile or steel or surprisingly, even financial services, which was considered to be one of the biggest gainers of the RBI move.

Prominent gainers

Two of the biggest gainers on Tuesday were L&T and SBI. While L&T was up by a huge Rs 75.70 or 5.93 per cent to close at Rs 1,353, SBI spiralled by Rs 103.40 to end at Rs 2043.90. The other two-digit gainers were PNB, which was up by Rs 37.90 at Rs 999, M&M which moved up by Rs 21.45 at Rs 683, ICICI bank, which gained Rs 27.10 at Rs 883.85. Axis Bank closed higher by Rs 23.95 at Rs 1,020.90.

Other noticeable gainers are: BPCL, which was up by Rs 15.55 at Rs 561, Jindal Steel that gained Rs 11.35 at Rs 548.70, and Siemens that was up by Rs 10.15 at Rs 760.

Lack of uniformity

Though there were other gainers too, their gains were not very significant. IT stocks made minor gains only.

Infosys was up by Rs 12.70 to close at Rs 2,613; TCS gained a mere Rs 7.85 to close at Rs 1085.55; HCL Tech was up by Rs 6.75 at Rs 427 and Wipro had to be content with a gain of Rs 3.60 at Rs 419.40.

In the financial space too, the performance was not uniform. While SBI, PNB and ICICI Bank made significant gains, HDFC was up by just Rs 4.40 to close at Rs 699.90 and its sibling HDFC Bank was up by a mere Rs 2 at Rs 486.

Among the auto pack also, this performance difference within the same sector was glaring.

While M&M moved up smartly, Hero MotoCorp ended higher by Rs 5.85 at Rs 1,881, Tata Motors moved up to Rs 221.15, a gain of Rs 2.05, and Bajaj Auto gained Rs 2.45 at Rs 1577. The buyback brouhaha created by Reliance also seems to be waning with the stock gaining Rs 9.95 to end at Rs 781.50.

The list of 12 losers also showed that their loss was insignificant — ranging from 15 paise in case of Sesa Goa to Rs 5.25 in the case of Coal India, except for the high value stock Grasim, which lost Rs 58.45 to close at Rs 2,465.60.

Not clear yet

It is not clear whether market would continue to move up in the days ahead or would take a pause before taking a call on future direction. With the RBI decision behind it, market may wait for the Q3 results that are yet to come from some of the market heavy weights like SBI and signals from the budget.

> ryn@thehindu.co.in

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