The selling pressure continues in the Indian markets, with all sectoral indices except the BSE IT index trading in the red. Leading the fall is the BSE Realty index which is down by 3%. The metal, banking and capital goods indices are all down by over 2%. Among stocks, the biggest gainers are Ambuja Cements and Hero Motor Corp, while DLF and Jaiprakash associates are the biggest losers in the markets.
Both BSE-Sensex and NSE-Nifty were trading lower by about 1.2% at the time of writing. The rupee was trading at 61.54 to the dollar.
IT stocks have held their own with HCL Tech and TCS leading the gains. The HCL Tech stock had closed at an all time of 936 on Monday. As per the management, the company would focus on delivering their product offerings packaged along with their services. Also the management wants to now focus on the underpenetrated infrastructure services space. This vertical offers huge opportunities to Indian IT companies as their combined presence in this vertical is less than 5%. The company had recently reported robust results for the first Quarter of the financial year with profits rising 41% year on year.
Engineering stocks are trading mixed today with stocks like Cummins India and Praj Industries leading the gains, while Alstom T&D and EMCO ltd leading the losses. Most of the Engineering large caps are in red today following poor performance of Bharat Heavy Electricals (BHEL) in the current quarter. According to a business daily, the Planning Commission of India has directed the power ministry to provide a report on the difficulties being faced by Indian project developers due to poor performance of Chinese equipments. This directive has come soon after the Central Electricity Authority (CEA) reported to the power ministry that new power plants, which have been built on Chinese equipments, are performing badly.
The Planning Commission has asked the power ministry to examine the CEA report. Chinese companies are believed to have orders worth Rs 400 bn for supplying equipments for upcoming capacities in the country. There have always been speculations that Chinese equipments are lesser efficient and not suitable for Indian coal. If the findings of the report come to be true, it may discourage developers from importing Chinese equipments. This in turn could be beneficial to several domestic engineering companies such as BHEL, Larsen & Toubro (L&T), Thermax and BGR Energy.
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