The markets ended with marginal losses after languishing in the negative zone for the better part of the day. The Sensex after starting the day in the green, soon slipped into the red on weakness in select auto and metal stocks. The index touched a low of 18,513 in the first hour of trade. Thereafter, the index moved sideways and finally ended at 18,562 - down 56 points.
Incidentally, the markets saw some freak trades at the opening bell this morning on the BSE. The Sensex was touching a high of 19,619, with as many as 12 index stocks surging 20% eaach. The list includes Reliance, Infosys, SBI, TCS, ICICI Bank, HDFC Bank, ONGC, BHEL, DLF, Larsen & Toubro, Wipro and Tata Steel. However, the BSE later announced that it would be cancelling all pending orders from the pre-market session.
Back to the markets, weak cues from overseas dampened sentiments. European bourses continued to show weakness ahead of the release of European bank stress tests results. CAC and DAX were trading 0.5% lower while markets in Switzerland and Stockholm declined 1%, each. In Asia, however, Nikkei was up 0.4%. Taiwan Weigted jumped 1% to 8,574.
"After a three-week rally, one week of profit booking is always possible in the markets, But with many Global development, low volume and few disappointing result markets are lacking trend. But we are very focussed on stocks which have reported good results," said A K Prabhakar, Senior Vice President Equity Research, Anand Rathi.
All the sectoral indices, barring IT, ended in the red. The BSE auto index was down 0.5% dragged by auto major, Bajaj Auto. The stock fell 1% to Rs 1,419 after reporting lowest y-o-y net profit growth in the last nine quarters for the first quarter ended June 2011. Net profit for the company grew 21% to Rs 711 crore for Q1FY12. Tata Motors and Hero Honda, among other auto stocks, were down 1-2% each.
Metal index slipped nearly 1%, mirroring movement in the London Metal Exchange. Shares in the sector had gone up recently after China announced strong macroeconomic data. Sesa Goa, Sterlite, Welcorp, Nalco, Hindalco and Tata Steel were the big losers in the index.
However, TCS bucked the trend and ended with a 2% gain after posting Q1 results. The company reported a net profit of Rs 2,380 crore, up 28% from Rs 1,863 crore in Q1FY11. The company's revenues increased 31% at Rs 10,797 crore for the quarter. Among other IT stocks - HCL Tech and Wipro advanced while Infosys once again ended lower, the stock was down 8% for the week.
In other news, the MET department has said that the key monsoon rains were 19% below normal a week ago improving from a quarter below average rains in the previous week.
India's services exports stood at $11.83 billion in May, 2011, up almost 3.2% in comparison to April. The country's total receipts from services exported stood at $11.46 billion in April, 2011, the Reserve Bank said in a statement.
Oil marketing companies (OMCs) and aviation shares moved up on the back of a fall in crude prices. Crude was down 2.5% in New York on Thursday. HPCL gained 1.3% while BPCL moved up 0.5%. Jet Airways, in the aviation space, added 3.5% to Rs 506.
The BSE market breadth was marginally negative. Out of 2,991 stocks traded, 1,469 declined while 1,385 advanced in trades.
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