Monday, July 5, 2010

Indices to move sideways as pessimism reigns

Stocks on Dalal Street are likely to open the week sideways with a negative bias, as uncertainties regarding the health of global economy continue to effect the investor sentiment.We expect the market to be lacklustre this week in line with the mood across the globe.

Expect the benchmark index or the Sensex to trade in a band of 100 points for the day. Indian markets performed relatively better than their global peers in the past week. The Sensex has given up 1.76 percent for the week, while the Dow Jones index on Wall Street shed 4.5 percent for the week.It is worth noting that the Sensex was the best performer among the world’s 20 largest equity markets last quarter.

Banking stocks outperformed the rest of the pack on Friday with the sectoral index gaining 0.2 percent, while the Metals and Consumer Goods were among the worst performing sectors. losing more than 0.5 percent of their value. WIPRO and TCS were among the top gainers among the index stocks, while Sterlite Ind and Mahindra made to the top of the losers list.

A report this morning from Prudential Financial sees Indian stocks gaining 10 percent by the end of this year, extending the longest rally since 1979, as an unscheduled rate increase by the central bank won’t derail economic growth. The firm expects the rate hike to have a negative impact on the markets in the immediate short term,but demand from foreign investors might help the benchmark rebound in the second half of this year.

Among the Midcap stocks, the stock Monnet Ispat gained more than 16 percent after the sponge -iron maker agreed to sell 12.5 percent stake to Blackstone Group LP. The scrip closed at Rs 468. Nucleus Software, AMD Medplast and Persistent systems are other stocks that were among the high fliers on Friday.