Stock specific moves push Sensex up for 5th straight week

It was a week of stock specific moves. The market ended positive for the fifth consecutive week thanks to a smart rally in stocks like TCS, HDFC Bank, Axis Bank and Reliance Industries in an otherwise a holiday-truncated expiry week. Globally, low probability of US Federal Reserve hiking interest rates in US in its March policy meeting also contributed to the buoyant sentiment.

During the week ended February 10, the S&P BSE Sensex added 1.5% or 424 points to settle at 28893, while Nifty50 gained 1.3% or 118 points to close at 8939.

Midcap and Smallcap stocks also mirrored the gains in the frontline indices to rise nearly 1% each.

Sectorally, all but BSE Power index (down 0.6%) closed higher.

BSE Oil & Gas index surged 3%, followed by the BSE Metal index (up 2.2%), and the BSE Consumer Durables index (up 2.1%). The BSE Bankex and Realty gained 1.6% each while, BSE IT rallied 1.4%.

BSE Telecom index (up 1.4%) hogged the limelight. With Reliance Jio unleashing a price war by announcing this week to end its free offers by March, the consolidation in the telecom sector gathered pace. Country’s largest telecom operator Bharti Airtel on Friday announced to acquire Telenor India. The move comes ahead of the likely Vodafone- Idea merger.

Among individual stocks, Reliance Industries, Axis Bank, HDFC Bank and Asian Paints advanced 11%, 7% and 5% and 4%, respectively. Sun Pharma also added 4%, while Tata Motors, Tata Steel and Coal India jumped 3% each.

Losers included NTPC (down 3%), Dr Reddy’s (down 1%) and Power Grid (down 0.8%) and M&M (down 0.6%).

The February series of derivative contracts witnessed higher rollover of 71% as compared to three-month average of 65%, while market wide rollovers were slightly lower at 79% as compared to three-month average of 81%. Overall, derivative data indicated long rollovers.

Here are some picks from the week gone by.

Company: ITC Ltd. CMP: 265.65 Mastermind