The Indian stock markets are getting ready for another flat day with a negative bias, after ending little changed for the past few sessions. We expect the markets to trade in a band of 17,150 and 17,300 for the day
FMCG and Oil & Gas were the winners from yesterday's trade, while Healthcare and Realty were the laggards. Auto stocks like Hero Honda and Maruti onitnued their up trend on Wednesday. We recommend booking partial profits in Hero Honda, Maruti and Tata Motors, as we believe that there might be a snap back in share prices in the near term.
There was some fund buying in FMCG stocks like ITC and HLL today and this looks like a one time event and we do not see any follow up buying in these stocks. The new listing Astec Life Sciences closed up 2 percent from the issue price at Rs 84. We do not like the fundamentals of the company, but reserve our comments from a trading perspective especially after the kind of move we have seen in Think Soft.
Hilton Metal, Atlanta, Plethico Pharma and Midcap IT counters like KPIT Cummins and Mastek were active yesterday. We recommend staying out of the market for now, as the trend is not clear yet and with the F&O expiry ahead it is tough to take a call on the markets from an intra-day perspective. Overall, we expect a negative open and a flat close for the day.