Pre Session Indian Stock Market Commentary

The Indian Market is likely to have a positive opening today due to favoring cues from the global markets. On Thursday, the Indian Market tumbled in the final trading hours of the session and gives all its gains to close in a negative territory. Tracking the mixed cues from the Asian markets, the domestic market opened with a gap down but sudden gathered the momentum as he buying intensified across the selective indices. However, industrial production data and weekly inflation, which is due tomorrow, led to heavy selling towards the end. From the sectoral front, Oil & Gas attracts investor’s confidence as most buying was seen from these baskets while bankex index faced heavy selling pressures. The BSE Sensex closed lower by 95.41 points at 15,695.10 and NSE Nifty fell by 14.05 points to close at 4,733. We expect that the declaration of the inflation figures by the government will give direction to the market. Also the long weekend ahead will led the investors to take calculative steps.

On Thursday, the US market closed in green. The Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) closed higher by 54.72 points at 12,581.98 along with NASDAQ closed up by 29.58 points at 2,351.70 and S&P index closed at 1,360.55 up by 6.06 points.

The Indian ADRS closed mixed. In technology sector, Satyam grew by 4.14% along with Patni computers by 1.29%, Infosys 0.69% and Wipro by 0.53%. In banking sector, ICICI bank and HDFC bank dropped by (2.38%) and (0.37%) respectively. In telecommunication sector, Tata Communication decreased by (4.79%). Sterlite industries grew by (0.77%).

Today the major stock markets in Asia are trading firm. Japan’s Nikkei is trading higher by 272.98 points at 13,218.28 along with Hang Seng index trading up by 177.14 points at 24,364.24 and Taiwan Weighted trading at 8,879.66 up by 50.26 points and Singapore Strait Times trading up by 25.19 points at 3,089.79.

The FIIs on Thursday stood as net seller in equity. The gross equity purchased was Rs2,040.80 Crore and the gross debt purchased was Rs0.00 Crore while the gross equity sold stood at Rs2,213.00 Crore and gross debt sold stood at Rs0.00 Crore. Therefore, the net investment of equity reported was (Rs172.30 Crore) and net debt was Rs0.00 Crore.

Today, Nifty has support at 4,605 and resistance at 4,857 and BSE Sensex has support at 15,301 and resistance at 16,082.

GAIL signs contract for supply of PMT gas

Gail India Ltd (GAIL) has announced that the Company has signed a contract with the consortia of Reliance Industries, BG Group of UK and Oil & Natural Gas Corporation (the co-ventures of the PMT fields in western Offshore) for buying the entire quantity of 17.3 million metric standard cubic meter per day. GAIL will buy the gas at USD 5.73 per million British Thermal Unit for Panna field and USD 5.57 per million British Thermal Unit of the Tapti field. The contract was signed late last night and is in pursuance of the
Government nominating GAIL as its nominee to take the entire PMT Gas.
Subsequently, agreements were also reached regarding the supplies to consumers. GAIL signed a term-sheet to supply, at PSC prices, 3.6 MMSCMD of natural gas to Reliance Industries Ltd and 2.13 MMSCMD of gas to Gujarat Gas Company Ltd as per the advice from the Ministry of Petroleum & Natural Gas, Government of India.
GAIL has also signed a short term Term-sheet for 15 days with Gujarat State Petroleum
Corporation Ltd for the supply of Natural gas for its City gas and small industries.
After this period of 15 days, GAIL will evolve a system for further supplies.
The present supply of 5 MMSCMD of gas at APM Prices gas to Power and Fertilizer units will be maintained.
Apart from this, GAIL will also supply 1.5 MMSCMD to Rajasthan Rajya Vidyut Nigam Ltd and 1 MMSCMD of natural gas to 8 fertilizer units along the Hazira and HBJ pipeline and 0.9 MMSCMD to Torrent Power.

Post Session Indian Stock Market Commentary

The Indian market closed on a mixed note on a volatile trading session. Though the market opened on a firm note but unable to sustained at higher levels as the profit booking across the counters prevails. The market gathered the momentum after the mid session on the back of selective buying across the sectoral indices. The volatility gripped the market since the initial bell as some arbitrageurs and jobbers stayed away to protest against the change in securities transaction tax, which came into effect from today. From the sectoral front, the Oil and Gas scrips remained in the limelight as most buying was seen from these baskets.

The BSE Sensex closed lower by 17.82 points at 15,626.62 while NSE Nifty closed marginally higher by 5.05 points at 4,739.55. The Sensex has touched an intra day high of 15,834.05 and low of 15,297.96. The BSE Mid Caps and Small Caps also closed lower by 32.72 points at 6,395.10 while BSE Small Cap closed higher by 20.14 points at 7,861.76.

The market breadth was strong as 1,728 stocks closed in green as against 920 stocks that closed in red.

The Oil and Gas index closed up by 336.90 points at 10,353.72. Major gainers are RPL (6.94%), Essar Oil (6.17%), Reliance industries (3.56%), BPCL (3.38%), Cairn India (1.83%), RNRL (1.65%) and IOCL (1.20%).

From the FMCG space, HUL (4.31%), ITC (2.33%), Marico (2.23%), Glaxosmith Cons (1.57%), Tata Tea (0.79%) and Rei Agro (0.73%) closed in green.

The Capital Goods index declined by 449.09 points to close at 13,559.93. Major losers are Bhel (8.01%), Crompton Greaves (7.72%), Kalpataru Power (4.49%), L&T (4.30%), Thermax (2.60%), Praj Inds (1.73%) and Siemens (1.12%).

The BSE Realty index fell by 88.32 points to close at 7,466.48 as DLF (3.02%), MahindraLife (1.62%), Purvankara (1.58%), Phoenix mill (0.97%), Unitech (0.38%) and HDIL (0.89%).

The Metal index closed lower by 208.80 points at 13,813.76. Losers are Sesa Goa (6.60%), SAIL (5.55%), Tata Steel (3.71%), Jindal Steel (2.89%), Welspun Gujarat (2.54%), Jindal saw (1.41%).

The Bankex index dropped by 74.06 points to close at 7,643.55 as Axis bank (7.69%), Canara bank (3.13%), IOB (3.14%), Yes bank (2.76%), PNB (1.93%), ICICI bank (1.76%) and Federal bank (1.43%) closed in negative.

The IT index closed marginally lower by 7.02 points at 3,540.59 as Educomp Solutions (5.28%), Aptech (3.42%), Wipro (3.83%) and Mphasis (2.55%) closed lower while Patni Comp (5.05%), Karut Net (4.92%), Niit Techno (4.31%) and TCS (2.95%) closed higher.

Second Gas Discovery in Deepwater Exploration Block in Krishna Basin

Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL) has announced yet another discovery in exploratory block KG-OSN-2003/1 (KG-V-D3) of Krishna Basin. The deepwater block KG-DWN-2003/1 of NELP-V is situated 45 Kms away from the coast and covers an area of 3288 Sq. Km. This is the second gas discovery in this block. RIL holds 90% participating interest (PI) and Hardy Exploration and Production India Inc holds 10% of PI in the block. The well KGVD3-B1 was drilled at a water depth of 711 m, to a total depth of 2730 m, with the objective of exploring high amplitude geobodies of Pliestocene deep water fan complex and unconformity related structural traps at Miocene level. Excellent qualities of reservoirs were encountered with gross hydrocarbon columns of around 111 meters. The potential of the zones was evaluated through wire-line based technology called Modular Dynamic Testing (MDT). This discovery namely Dhirubhai-41 has been notified to Government of India and Directorate General of Hydrocarbons. The potential commercial interest of the discovery is being ascertained through more data gathering and analysis. In February 2008, RIL made first gas discovery in the same block and the discovery was named as Dhirubhai-39 and the notification of potential commercial discovery was submitted to Government of India and Directorate General of Hydrocarbons few days back. About 70 per cent of this block is covered by 3D Seismic survey and further prospect analysis is underway. This discovery has established a petroleum system in the block, the extent of which is being analyzed. In the last quarter of this financial year (2007-08), RIL has made four discoveries, two in Krishna Basin Deep Waters, one in shallow waters of Krishna Basin and one in Mahanadi Basin.

Subhash Projects - Award of Order for Rs 329.48 Crores

Subhash Projects & Marketing Ltd has informed that the Company has bagged order worth Rs 329.48 crores for execution of Main Plant, CW & Offsite Civil Works package for Bongaigaon Thermal Power Project (3X 250 MW) from NTPC Ltd.

Zep Inc. Selects HCL Technologies as Implementation Partner for Greenfield System

HCL Technologies Ltd has informed that on April 01, 2008 announced that it has been selected by Zep Inc. (NYSE:ZEP), a leading provider of specialty chemicals, as implementation partner for its greenfield system including the SAP® ERP Financials solution. Under the terms of this agreement, HCL will deploy, customize and manage SAP ERP Financials for Zep across the United States and Canada.
HCLs collaboration with Zep comes weeks after HCL announced an expanded global services partnership with SAP AG to deliver joint business value through a customer-centric ecosystem. Through the partnership with SAP, HCL is enabling its customer Zep to access the business benefits of enterprise service-oriented architecture (SOA) based on SAP solutions and draw upon HCLs strengths in emerging geographies, strong domain experience and service Innovation capabilities.
Over the past few years, HCL has set the pace for the industry by pioneering value or entation over volume delivery, a focus that has been a key ingredient of our continued leadership,, said Sandeep Kishore, SVP, Hi-Tech and Manufacturing at HCL Technologies. The expanded partnership with SAP was a milestone for both our Companies, and this partnership with Zep is further evidence of the value of our collaboration. Were looking forward to implementing a solution that will enable Zep to achieve greater efficiency gains in financial processes and support future growth.
Through HCLs implementation and support methodology, Zeps use of SAP solutions will support and sustain the Companys standard work processes, enable profitable business growth and allow for new capabilities like electronic business-to-business transactions. SAP ERP Financials will also provide a platform for future growth.

Market losses further momentum, Inflation surge to 5.02%

The market loses further momentum soon after the break for sun outage due to heavy selling pressures across the counters. Also the rising of inflation to 5.02% in the week ended February 2008 adds to the negative sentiments in the market. The inflation grew to nine months high due to rise in prices of fruits, vegetables and oil seeds.

At 1.31PM, the BSE Sensex is trading lower by 708 points at 15,834 and NSE Nifty is trading down by 207.25 points at 4,714.15.

Leading the rally of losers from the NSE Nifty are Unitech trading down by (11.18%) at Rs278 along with Reliance Energy by (10.9%) at Rs1300, ICICI bank by (10.42%) at Rs860, Bajaj Auto by (9.66%) at Rs1926, Siemens by (8.53%) at Rs665, Hindalco by (8.17%) at Rs191, Tata Power by (7.51%) at Rs1108 and Ranbaxy Labs by (7.9%) at Rs420.

The Auto index is trading lower by 298.61 points at 4,551.25. Pushing it are Bajaj Auto trading down by (10.01%) at Rs1915.05 along with M&M by (5.97%) at Rs654.95, Maruti Suzuki by (5.86%) at Rs885.10, TVS Motors by (5.81%) at Rs39.70, Tata Motors by (5.64%) at Rs663, Escorts by (3.45%) at Rs98.05, Bharat Forge by (3.44%) at Rs268 and Amtek auto by (3.06%) at Rs274.

The Power index is trading down by 257.05 points at 3,084.05 as Reliance Power is trading lower by 11.84% at Rs331.70 in line with Reliance Energy by 11.06% at Rs1298, GMR Infra by 10.04% at Rs140.65, Areva by 8.28% at Rs1706, CESC by 7.40% at Rs439.05 and ABB by 5.88% at Rs1050.10.

TCS is trading lower by (2.4%) at Rs854 as the company has announced a partnership for joint R&D activities with Nokia Siemens Networks (NSN) through partial transfer of tasks at NSN''s Development Centre in Dusseldorf as well as the transfer of 90 employees to TCS.