Midcaps & Smallcaps buck the trend

Thu, 4 Feb 11:30 am

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After opening on a subdued note, the Indian markets continued to trade weak during the previous two hours of trade. Currently, selling activity is being witnessed among stocks from IT, telecom, and metal and realty sectors. Nevertheless, FMCG, consumer durables and oil & gas stocks are the ones managing to garner investors' interest.

The BSE-Sensex and the NSE-Nifty are currently trading lower by around 93 points and 26 points respectively. However, Stocks from the midcap and small cap spaces are currently trading in the green, with the BSE-Midcap and the BSE-Smallcap indices trading up by 0.1% and 0.5% respectively. The rupee is trading at 46.10 to the US dollar.

According to a leading business daily, Indian IT major HCL Technologies has signed up a strategic partnership with nMetric, a California based small IT products company specializing in solutions for production and physical logistics. The deal aims at providing intelligent shop-floor solutions for automotive manufacturers. The HCL's comprehensive automotive solution together with nMetric's expertise will be able to design solutions to help automotive manufacturers improve their operations by automating and monitoring complex factory processes.

It may be noted that HCL derives around one-fourth of its revenues from the manufacturing sector and has been lately facing trouble on account of global slowdown in the segment. We believe that this partnership will aid HCL in expanding its ability to provide innovative IT solutions to the global auto industry which has started to see some signs of recovery.

As per a leading business daily, the world's largest drug maker Pfizer has identified China, Brazil, India, Mexico, Russia and Turkey as key emerging markets for the company. Recently, the company hinted about its plans to increase its presence in these fast-growing underdeveloped markets. It expects them to eventually yield solid profits. The company is particularly upbeat about the Chinese market which is growing at the rate of 25 to 28%, much faster than the other emerging markets which are growing at 12% to 14%.

As for India, the company has forayed into branded generics in a bid to gain access to a wider market and bolster sales. It has already launched two products in this category. Pfizer is also looking to increase its reach to doctors and the focus will be more on metros and tier I, II, III and IV cities before it ventures into rural areas. Stocks from pharma space are trading in red currently.