Markets slip on late selling

The markets today opened on a sedate note, given lack of any significant cues from the overseas markets. The Sensex touched a high of 18,000, and later exhibited lacklustre movement for major part of the trading day.

However, weakness crept in realty and IT stocks. As the selling pressure mounted towards the end, the Sensex tumbled to a low of 17,839 - down 161 points from the day's high. The Sensex finally ended with a loss of 124 points at 17,868.

The NSE Nifty moved in a range of 64 points, from a high of 5413 the index slipped to a low of 5349, and finally settled with a loss of 41 points at 5368.

Dharmesh Shah, technical analyst, ICICI Securities expects Nifty to decline to 5300 and 5250, and then bounce-back from those levels. He explains a peculiar trend noticed in the markets. Nifty has topped out in October, January and April - infact after every quarterly results. Nifty topped out at 5476, seeing strong support at 5340.

The BSE Realty index shed 1.4% at 3373, and the IT index declined over 1% to 5475.

The mid-cap and small-cap stocks out-performed the large-caps today, as a result of which the market breadth was positive for most part of the trading day. The breadth, however, turned negative towards the close. Out of 3,044 stocks traded today, 1,547 ended in red, while 1,333 moved up.

Bharti Airtel and Hero Honda, down 3% each, were the major losers among the Sensex stocks. Bharti ended at Rs 307, while Hero Honda dropped to Rs 1,815.

DLF and ICICI Bank tanked 2.5% each to Rs 301 and Rs 904, respectively.

Tata Motors, Sterlite, Hindustan Unilever and Reliance Infrastructure were down over 2% each.

Reliance Communications, Infosys, Larsen & Toubro, Wipro, ACC and TCS were the other major losers.

Mahindra & Mahindra bucked the trend, and finished with a gain of 2.7% at Rs 662.

SBI and HDFC Bank advanced over 1% each to Rs 2,504 and Rs 2,127, respectively.

REALTY LOSERS

Other than the heavyweight DLF, Phonenix Mills too shed 2.5% at Rs 219. Unitech, Orbit Corporation and Indiabulls Realestate were also down around 2% each. On the other hand, Anant Raj Industries bucked the trend and ended with gain of 3% at Rs 120 followed by HDIL, up over 1%, at Rs 266.

Param Desai, Logistics & Real Estate analyst of Angel Broking is bullish on HDIL whereas neutral on DLF and Unitech. He says, realty sector has performed well in the past month. The results of DLF were not good. In the last one-month the stock went from Rs 270 to Rs 310.  Currently, we have given a Neutral rating on DLF with target of Rs 298. Also our rating on Unitech stands neutral at
current levels.

Further adding that, top Realty picks include HDIL on back of new launches, good cashflows and Anath Raj as it is zero debt company. Cash flows for both these companies are looking good.