Stock markets in bear hug, slide downhill
By S Jha
New Delhi, September 29: Indian stock markets seem to be in firm bear hug, with the bourses falling for the seventh trading sessions in a row, while the heavyweights remaining weak to give any respite to the broader market.
The Thursday session saw typical wild swings, as the day was the monthly expiry, with markets failing to sustain the strong opening, as in the next couple of hours the indexes slipped into the red. The trend remained firm for sell on the rise theme on the bourses.
The Indian equity markets fell on Thursday despite Dow Jones being in green, suggesting that the foreign institutional investors continue to dump India funds.
As captured by The Raisina Hills in the earlier posts, the pharma and the FMCG ducked the bear trend on the bourses, netting weekly gains, with frontliners from the two sectors making most of the gains.
Sun Pharma, Cipla, Apollo Hospital were among the pharma stocks rising on Thursday, extending their gains, amid claims by the technical chartists that the pharma index is over crucial resistance level.
The FMCG, which is the defensive sector on the bourses, also remained firm with ITC leading the rally.
The realty cracked the most, bearing the brunt of the relentless selling on the bourses, while staying true to the sayings that real-estate takes the biggest hits in times of recession. The realty index has cracked by almost 11 per cent on the bourses.
However, the mid cap segments on Thursday sought to reverse the trend, with a large number of shares closing in the green, which indicated signs of the retail investors rushing to bottom fish the falling market.
The strongest segment on the bourses has been the private banks in the last month rally, which has come under severe pressure, with the Bank Nifty bleeding on the bourses. The star performers such as ICICI bank, Kotak Mahindra bank, IndusInd Bank, Axis Bank are all under pressure, which is taking the bourses further down.
Additionally, the equity market is also not getting any support from market leaders such as Reliance, TCS, Infosys, HDFC twins, who together account for the bulk of the weightage on Sensex and Nifty.
With the Monetary Policy Committee of the Reserve Bank of India all set to wrap up the three days long meeting in Mumbai, the Friday session could further remain volatile, as the commentary from the Governor Shakti Kant Das would give direction to the equity market.
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