Market wrap: Red reigns on D-Street as 347 of BSE 500 stocks see up to 12% WoW fall. IT, power scrips among worst hit – News Air Insight

Indian stock markets ended the holiday-shortened week on a lacklustre note with the BSE 500 index falling 0.8%. Nearly 71% or 357 stocks closed in the red while 142 settled up on a weekly basis. The market’s breadth remained bearish, largely dragged by energy, IT and FMCG stocks as foreign institutional investors (FIIs) remained net sellers while the domestic institutional investors (DIIs) once again mitigated the slide.

Biggest laggards

Out of the 347 counters that closed in the red, only three stocks suffered a double-digit decline viz. Greaves Cotton (-11%), Godrej Agrovet (-11%) and Zensar Technologies (-12%), while 56 saw a high single-digit fall between 5% and 9%. The other biggest losers were Devyani International, JK Cement, eClerx Services, Affle 3i, Blue Star, Saregama India and Amber Enterprises India.

Top 10 weekly gainers

Out of the 142 stocks that were up during the week, just nine managed double-digit returns, led by 21% gains by 3M India. The next to follow were CCL Products (19%), Hitachi Energy India (18%), Privi Speciality Chemicals (17%) and Redington (15%).

Others like L&T Finance, City Union Bank, Indus Towers, Vodafone Idea and Shriram Finance were other top gainers with returns between 11% and 9%.

Sensex performance

Sensex slightly underperformed compared to the broader index with a slip of 0.9% on account of weak performances from Power Grid Corporation, Maruti Suzuki, ITC, Eternal and Larsen & Toubro (L&T). Their losses stood in the range of 5.6% and 3.7% in the week gone by. In the 30-stock index, only 23 counters closed in the red while just 7 managed to end positive. Among the winners were Mahindra & Mahindra (6%), Asian Paints (4.3%), Bajaj Finance (2.3%), State Bank of India (SBI, 2%), Bajaj Finserv (0.8%), Titan Company (0.6%) and Sun Pharmaceutical.

Sector snapshot

Most sectors closed the week in the red, with BSE Utilities getting the worst hit at 4.2%. The next in line were BSE Power and BSE India Infrastructure Index, which fell by 3.4% and 2.8%, respectively. Meanwhile, BSE Commodities, BSE Metal, BSE Information Technology, BSE Fast Moving Consumer Goods and BSE Consumer Discretionary each fell by 1% or more.

The financial services sector was the top weekly gainer, though the uptick was just around 0.4%. BSE Bankex and BSE Oil & Gas closed flat, though the bias remained positive.

BSE Midcap ended with a 0.6% downtick while BSE Smallcap closed with cuts of 1.5%.

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FII/DII action

Foreign Institutional Investors (FIIs) remained net sellers at Rs 401 crore this week. After selling domestic equities for three sessions, they shopped for Rs 4,581.34 crore worth of shares on Friday. The domestic institutional investors (DIIs) were net buyers at Rs 16,678 crore.

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