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Nalini D'Souza
The flow of FII funds brought back life on Dalal Street. On their buy list, believe market players, was Tata Tea, ITC, Zee Telefilms, Bhel, Reliance, IPCL and Larsen. Morgan Stanley Broking, Jardine Broking, SG Asia Securities, HSBC Broking and Indosuez WI Carr were active in the market. Domestic mutual funds like UTI was rumoured to have selectively picked up pharma stocks.
What added fuel to the institutional rally was the profit figures posted by several leading corporates. Even companies like ACC, where investors had low expectations, performed reasonably well bringing in pleasant surprise to the investors.
Another prominent feature of the day was the sudden surge in volumes at the counter of IPCL on April 29. A strong turnaround at the counters of several PSUs like HPCL, BPCL and MTNL was a unique feature of the week ended April 30 on the local bourses. Huge volumes were traded at these counters marking the beginning of an operator driven rally at these counters, said brokers.
The Siemens story:An operator driven rally was once again triggered at the counter of Siemens with the company's decision to postpone the rights issue. At 10.57 am when NSE flashed the news that the company's directors who met on April 29 took a decision to postpone the rights issue, the stock jumped by 6 per cent to get locked at Rs 253.80. However, brokers continued to be confused as to why the news was not announced on Thursday.
Another factor which disturbed market men was the volumes at the counter. Even before the announcement of the board's decision the counter clocked a volume of over 3.33 lakh shares which by any normal standards is considered `big'. The market was agog with rumours that a section of the operators were aware of this development who could have stepped in before the news was made open and exited at the day's high bringing the stock down to Rs 231.90 during the close. The erractic movement between Rs 217.05 and Rs 253.80 was mind boggling.Advantage NSE: `Advantage NSE' was the slogan of theweek as NSE remained open on Friday with BSE closed on account of Buddha Purnima. Another advantage of 90 minutes on Thursday, as BSE closed at 2 pm and NSE at 3.30 pm led to steep price discrepancy between the two exchanges. These factors coupled with the short positions saw many frontline stocks attract backwardation charges on the BSE, indicating huge short positions at the counters.
Zee Telefilms attracted backwardation charges of Rs 24.50 during the first phase of the session. However, by 7.40 pm the backwardation lowered to Rs 16. Reliance attracted a backwardation at Rs 4.50. Colgate, ACC, Indian Hotel and Cadbury also attracted backwardation during the initial phase of the session.
Big deals: Petrochemical majors IPCL and Reliance both witnessed a major turnaround during the week ended April 29. The month long silence at the counter of IPCL was finally broken on Thursday with the counter witnessing a sharp surge in volumes. The counter clocked a phenomenal volume of over 95 lakh sharesaggregating to a turnover of Rs 68 crore. After witnessing a simultaneous price appreciation of 16 per cent in two consecutive sessions, bulls finally marched in to book their share of profits. Reliance also witnessed a similar move in terms of both volumes and price. According to market sources, Credit Lyonnais was the buyer at the counter of IPCL while the seller being Capital International and UTI.
Reported deals: The `trade-to-trade' segment of the NSE witnessed huge volumes on Thursday. Digital Equipment recorded a single cross deal of 1 lakh shares reported at Rs 411.50. Interestingly, on the normal segment the volumes at the counter were marked at a low of 3,300 shares. According to market sources, this deal is a part of the chunk which exchanged hands on Wednesday between two leading FII fund managers. Reliance registered a huge deal of 7.07 lakh shares at Rs 136.50, MTNL registered a deal of 3.18 lakh shares at Rs 156.50. Counters like HLL and Crisil, where the trading volumes do not exceedmore than 50-60,000 shares on an average, registered huge volumes at the trade-to-trade segment. Crisil registered a volume of 70,000 shares reported at Rs 450 and HLL witnessed a deal of 28,856 at Rs 2,050.
Copyright © 1999 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.
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