Sensex pares some gains, ends 269 points up, Nifty above 11,400


After surging 500 points in the intra-day trade, the S&P BSE Sensex witnessed a sharp fall at the fag-end of the session, mainly due to profit-booking to end at 38,024, up 269 points or 0.71 per cent. Financial stocks such as HDFC Bank and ICICI Bank contributed the most to the index’s gains while Reliance Industries (RIL), ITC and Hindustan Unilever (HUL) emerged as the biggest drags.

The NSE’s benchmark index Nifty50 closed above 11,400 level at 11,427, up 84 points or 0.74 per cent. The index hit a high of 11,487 levels during the day.

Both Sensex and Nifty reclaimed their crucial levels of 38,000 and 11,400 levels, respectively in the intra-day trade after a gap of six months.

On a weekly basis, Sensex gained 3.68 per cent and Nifty added 3.54 per cent.

Market breadth remained in favour of declines as out 2,860 companies traded on BSE, 1,476 declined and 1,209 advanced while 175 remained unchanged. A total of 59 securities hit their 52-week highs while 111 scrips hit their one-year lows.

In the broader market, the S&P BSE MidCap index ended 83 points, or 0.55 per cent higher at 15,172, while the S&P BSE SmallCap index settled at 14,837, up 51 points or 0.34 per cent.

Banking barometer Nifty Bank, too hit a fresh record high of 29,520.70 during the day. It ended at 29,381.45, up over 1.50 per cent with 10 out of 12 constituents ending in the green.

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Sensex ends below 35,000; metal, pharma stocks drag


Benchmark indices dropped on Friday tracking global markets, while metal and pharma stocks pulled down the indices ahead of elections in the key state of Karnataka.

The S&P BSE Sensex ended at 34,915, down 188 points while the broader Nifty50 index settled at 10,618, down 61 points.

Among sectoral indices, the Nifty Metal index was trading over 1% lower led by a fall in shares of Hindustan Zinc and Hindalco. The Nifty IT index, too, was down led by a fall in shares of Mindtree and Wipro. Among the FMCG counters, ITC, Emami, GSK Consumer slipped over 2% on the NSE.

Pharma stocks pushed both indices lower, with the Nifty Pharma index falling over 1.5%.

Bajaj Auto, Mahindra & Mahindra (M&M), ITC, Reliance Industries (RIL), Mahindra & Mahindra Financial Services (MMFS) and JSW Steel are the six stocks that Morgan Stanley is betting on in India to play its ‘growth at reasonable price’ (GARP) investment strategy.

An Indian jeweller that saw its market worth reach $3.6 billion at the start of the year is now floundering at about a quarter of that value after one of its founders gifted some shares to family members, raising concern about the company’s governance. PC Jeweller Ltd. slumped by about half after the company said last week that one of its founders P.C. Gupta made the gifts through off-market transactions. The stock has plunged 75 per cent from a record on January 19, taking its market capitalization to Rs 58.3 billion ($873 million). It climbed 21 per cent to Rs 146.85 as of 12.31 p.m. in Mumbai on Friday.

Realty firm Godrej Properties on Friday reported over two-fold jump in its consolidated net profit at Rs 1.41 billion for the January-March quarter of last financial year on higher sales. Its net profit stood at Rs 625.9 million in the year-ago period, the company said in a filing to the BSE.

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Reblog: Demonetization: Impact on stock markets


demonetization

For a week now demonetization of high value notes has been polarizing the country between those who totally support the idea and those who are against it. The move has had a big impact on the stocks markets. A lot of investors are withdrawing capital from stocks. Some because they are out of funds (since the currency they had at home no longer works) and others because they expect a crash, perhaps an opportunity to buy at lower levels.

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