Marginally lower on a passive day

Wed, 21 Sep Closing

   Previous Close   

   Pre-Open   

   09:30 am   

   11:30 am   

   01:30 pm   

Volatility continued to rule the roost during the closing hours of the session today, forcing the indices in the Indian stock market to close the day marginally in the negative. Thus, while BSE-Sensex recorded a decline of around 30 points, losses on the NSE-Nifty came in at around 7 points. BSE Mid Cap and BSE Small Cap indices on the other hand, bucked the trend and managed to record decent gains in the region of 0.7% each. Nearly three stocks declined for every two that gained on the Sensex today.

Other Asian indices closed mostly in the positive today whereas Europe is trading mostly in the negative currently. The rupee was trading at Rs 48.1 to the dollar at the time of writing.

With no major news in sight, markets seemed to be groping for direction today and remained rather inactive for most part of the session. While the indices did open in the positive, profit booking at higher levels forced them into the negative territory. They never quite recovered from those levels and ultimately, closed the day on a marginally negative note.

Biocon, India's largest biotech firm has said that it is targeting to achieve revenues of US$ 1 bn in the next three years. Not only this, it also visualises itself as one of the top 10 biotech companies in the world. The company is laying major emphasis on chronic disease. It is also planning to list its research services unit, Syngene inside the next one and a half years. Syngene is India's leading contract organization offering integrated drug and development service with capabilities in medicinal chemistry, biology, in vivo pharmacology, toxicology, customs synthetics, process R&D and formulation development for small and large molecules. Previous year, the company forayed into Malaysia and is in the process of setting up a bio manufacturing and R&D facility there. The company's share price edged higher by 1% on the bourses today.

Idea Cellular the telecom major also closed higher today, albeit only marginally. The interest was kicked off following reports that the company added 2.3 m mobile subscribers in the month of August. On account of this, Idea's total subscriber count now stands at 98.4 m. Earlier, the company added nearly 1 m mobile subscribers in the month of July. Bharti Airtel, India's top mobile carrier added 1.4 m subscribers, taking its total to 171.2 m subscribers. This is another set of good numbers by the industry we believe and in addition to the recent price hikes taken by the operators, it does augur well for the long term future of the telecom sector.