Persistent selling mars indices

Thu, 3 Apr Closing

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The Indian equity markets languished in the red throughout the trading session today. The indices began the day's proceedings on a firm note but quickly pared all its gains and moved into the red as profit booking at higher levels took toll. While in the later hours there were efforts made to move into the positive, these proved futile and the indices closed below the dotted line. While the BSE Sensex today closed lower by 42 points, the NSE-Nifty closed lower by 16 points. The BSE Mid Cap and BSE Small Cap were not spared either and closed lower by 0.4% and 0.2% respectively. While FMCG and healthcare stocks found favour, losses were largely seen in banking and oil & gas stocks.

As regards global markets, Asian indices closed mixed today while European indices have opened in the red. The rupee was trading at Rs 60.24 to the dollar at the time of writing.

Auto stocks closed mixed today. While Maruti Suzuki and Hero Motocorp found favour, Tata Motors and Bajaj Auto closed into the red. As per a leading business daily, Tata Motors is stepping up its focus on strengthening its capability and bringing strong products to the market in a fast and cost effective manner. While the previous CEO Mr Karl Slym died in January this year, under his leadership various initiatives had already begun in terms of new product launches and improving profits. Indeed, Tata Motors has been facing intense competition in the passenger vehicles space on account of a dearth of new products, while its competitors have been making launches. What more, the commercial vehicles (CV) segment, where Tata Motors is the market leader, has also been facing considerable headwinds on account of the slowdown in the economy and sluggish industrial activity. The company was also compelled to refurbish Nano as sales volumes of the car kept consistently declining.

As per a leading business daily, Sun Pharma once again came under the USFDA scanner last month for failing to stick to good manufacturing practices (GMP) norms. As a result, the company's Gujarat based facility was slapped with a ban by the US regulator. It has now emerged that torn documents, partially destroyed raw data showing undesirable results and unclean toilets were among the reasons cited for the ban. The plant, accounts for less than 1% of Sun Pharma's sales, and in that sense will not have much of a material impact on the company's performance. However, given that most Indian pharma companies have been found to violate GMP norms, this development does not bode well for the company's reputation. It must be noted that this is the first time that an Indian plant of Sun Pharma has come under the USFDA scanner. The last time it faced trouble with the USFDA was with respect to the import alert on a US based facility of its subsidiary Caraco as well as a warning letter over Taro's Canadian plant. Both of these issues were resolved. The stock closed higher today.