Markets take a breather

Tue, 5 Apr Closing

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The Indian stock market indices managed to come off the day's lows during the closing stages. However, a negative closing could not be avoided and the markets ended the day marginally in the red. BSE-Sensex edged lower by around 30 points whereas NSE-Nifty had a flat ending today. BSE Midcap and BSE Small cap indices on the other hand had a good day in office today and closed higher in the region of 1% each. Advance to decline ratio on the Sensex was in favour of the latter with there being three declines for every two stocks that advanced.

Asian indices closed mixed today while Europe is trading in the red currently. Rupee was trading at Rs 44.4 to the dollar at the time of writing.

Looks like the indices seem to be taking a breather right now against a backdrop of strong gains in the past few trading sessions. From here on though, a lot will depend on how the results season, that starts next week onwards, will pan out. To be frank, we do not expect anything encouraging coming out from the same and hence, we could be in for sideways movement for quite some time to come.

Idea Cellular, one of India's largest telecom companies closed on a pretty strong note today. The stock surged some 3 odd percent. Infact, at one point in time the stock was trading higher by as much as 7%. The strong buying in the counter seemed to have been triggered by news doing the rounds that the company's controlling stakeholder, Aditya Birla Group, was yet again scouting for buyers, amongst which was South Africa's MTN Group limited. Idea has however denied any such development. Investors though are not convinced and seem to believe that something is indeed cooking. It should be noted that the Aditya Birla Group owned around 46.7% stake in the company as on December 2010. Some experts are of course of the opinion that an alliance rather than an outright sale makes more sense at the present juncture as Idea is a big enough player in the Indian market.

Voltas, the air conditioning major emerged as one of the other stocks that closed in the positive today. The stock closed higher by more than 2%. As per reports, the company has bought an additional 11% stake in an Oman based JV, Lalbuksh Voltas Engineering Services from its partner, Lalbuksh Contracting and trading establishment. The deal has valued the partnership at around Rs 600 m. The company now holds a 60% stake in the JV. Lalbuksh Voltas Engineering Services is engaged in the business of water and oil drilling, water management and landscaping in Oman. It should be noted that Voltas has had a good run on the bourses in the past one month, gaining more than 14% as opposed to around 7% gain registered by the Sensex.