Banking stocks drag markets down

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The Indian stocks ended the day on a weak note with the market further declining during the final hour of trade. The BSE-Sensex closed with a loss of about 214 points while the NSE-Nifty closed lower by about 62 points. Barring stocks from the consumer durables and IT spaces, losses were seen across the board. banking and power stocks were amongst the least preferred today. The S&P BSE Midcap and S&P BSE Smallcap indices ended the day on a weak note as well, with the indices closing lower by about 0.5% and 0.1% respectively.

Asian markets finished mixed as of the most recent closing prices. The Nikkei 225 gained 0.67%, while the Shanghai Composite led the Hang Seng lower. They fell 1.72% and 0.80% respectively. European markets are higher today with shares in Germany leading the region. The DAX is up 0.78% while France's CAC 40 is up 0.60% and London's FTSE 100 is up 0.37%. The rupee was trading at 65.04 against the US$ at the time of writing.

According to a leading financial daily, ABB India has rolled out its first 800kV ultra-high voltage direct current (UHVDC) transformer from its Vadodara facility. The transformer will be installed at Power Grid's Agra substation which is a part of the North East-Agra's 800 kV UHVDC transmission link. Reportedly, UHVDC enables evacuation and transmission of clean energy from the North East to load centers of North India. It also brings cheaper power from the states of Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh to the North Eastern Region with nominal losses.

North-East Agra link will become the world's first multi-terminal UHVDC connection after it's fully commissioned in 2016. ABB has already supplied six units of 400 kilovolt (kV) converter transformer for this project for installation at Alipurduar substations in West Bengal from the facility in Vadodara.

Engineering stocks ended the trading day on a mixed note with Bharat Bijlee and Manugraph India leading the gains. While, Thermax Ltd and Opto Circuits closed with maximum losses.

2015 has been a disappointing year for the Indian engineering industry. Majority of the stocks from the engineering sector have underperformed, barring a few exceptions. The current problems that the sector is going through are largely on the account of the economic recovery not panning out as anticipated and the investment cycle not picking up with stalled projects yet to kick off in a big way. In our recent articles of '5 Minute Wrap Up', we outlined the engineering stocks which have underperformed the Sensex and what is expected of engineering sector going forward.

Moving on to stocks from the information technology space, Wipro has reportedly won a five-year IT contract from Coop Norge Handel AS (Coop Norge). Coop Norge is a leading retailer in Norway with a market share of 33% and over 1,500 outlets. As a part of the agreement, Wipro will transform Coop Norge's enterprise SAP software landscape and upgrade the company's data center infrastructure, geared towards achieving superior performance.

Reportedly, this collaboration will benefit supply chain and distribution operations at the Norwegian retailer, among other functions. It will enable Coop Norge to strengthen its move towards a more efficient operating model with increased reach and availability. This venture leverages Wipro's new age technologies, frameworks and IP including ServiceNXT, the company's integrated Managed Services framework.

Wipro in fact announced its results for the second quarter for FY16 recently. The company reported a 1.6% QoQ increase in sales and a 2.2% QoQ increase in net profits. Here is our analysis of the results. (Subscription Required)