Infosys, Castrol top list of outstanding badla positions

Our Markets Bureau

Mumbai, May 17: INFOSYS, Castrol and Hindalco among others are at the top of a list of companies, which indicates the size of carryforward positions in the secondary market.

This list becomes important in the light of the ban on the carryforward system of trading imposed by the Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) on Monday.

Following this ban, the marketmen having outstanding positions in these stocks would have to unwind their positions by September 3.

In turn, the list also partially reveals how the share price of these companies would behave over the next couple of months till September 3.

According to a study of outstanding positions on the The Stock Exchange, Mumbai (BSE) done by myiris.com, in value terms, Infosys tops the list with Rs 17,19,357.31 crore worth of shares outstanding.

The study indicates that the Infosys Technology counter is oversold with sales position larger than purchases. If the marketmen with more sale positions on this counter unwind their positions (as per Sebi diktat) there is a distinct possibility of the Infosys share price going up.

On Thursday, the Infosys stock closed on the BSE at Rs 3,909, up from Monday’s close by Rs 111.55. Marketmen however, point out that the jump in the Infosys stock price was also because of the company receiving an order of around $10 million.

Similarly, in terms of the number of shares outstanding, Castrol tops the list with some 5,36,462 shares outstanding as of May 14, the date on which Sebi announced the ban on carryforward.

Hindalco follows Infosys, whose outstandings in value terms is said to be Rs 2,31,396.21 crore. SBI’s counter has outstandings of Rs 2,19,290.32 crore, Hughes Software Rs 1,67,983.89 crore and Reliance Petroleum Limited Rs 1,32,215.71 crore.

In terms of number of outstanding shares, RPL follows Castrol, with outstanding shares of 2,27,688, State Bank of India (90,631), Bhel (63,783) while Infosys has outstanding shares of 44,053.

Interestingly, there are old economy scrips as well as new economy scrips in the outstanding list. The reason cited for the predominance of TMT scrips in the outstandings list is the ban on short sales.