Thursday May 30, 03:30 PM
Indo-Pak heat zaps bourses... |
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By Equitymaster.com
Indo-Pak relations continued to cast their shadow on the bourses for the second week running. After opening higher, the sentiment too a beating post negative comments from the Pak side, which fueled war worries. As a result, the broader market took a beating with index pivotals leading the way.
The BSE Sensex closed at 3,135 (down 25 points) and the NSE Nifty closed at 1,032 (down 10 points). The rupee was trading at Rs 49.00 per US dollar.
The software sector closed largely in the red. Only pivotals like Infosys and Wipro (WIPRd.BO, news) managed to hold their ground. Otherwise all counters were significantly in the red. With the NASDAQ futures in the red, domestic software counters too were down.
Telecom companies like Hughes Tele and VSNL saw some activity today. Both have declared FY02 results recently. While Hughes Tele saw an all around improvement in performance YoY, VSNL recorded a decline of 11% both in its topline and bottomline. However, at close today, Hughes Tele finished in the red, while VSNL gained towards close. VSNL gained despite the controversy regarding the management deciding to invest Rs 12 bn in Tata Teleservices.
Tisco gained over 1% today. The steel major declared a 63% dip in FY02 net profits. Another pivotal, HPCL, recorded a 28% drop in FY02 net profit. However, in 4QFY02 the company clocked a 30% net profit growth. The oil PSU was down by over 1%. BPCL was down over 3%.
Other PSUs that declined include Gail (GAIL.BO, news) , IPCL, MTNL (MTNL.BO, news) and Engineers India. However, Bhel (BHEL.BO, news) finished up largely led have encouraging export orders. Most Tata Group companies were down today. These included Telco, Tata Tea (TTTE.BO, news) , Tata Power (TTPW.BO, news) , Tata Chem (TTCH.BO, news) , Tata Finance (TTFI.BO, news) and Trent (TREN.BO, news) . Some of these stocks may have become ex-dividend.
Weakness in index pivotals like RPL, Reliance (RELI.BO, news) and HLL were largely responsible for the decline on the indices. It seems war clouds refuse to go away, or rather the market movers refuse to let go of the war phobia.
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