After a buoyant start that saw the Sensex rising to a fresh 2-year high and the Nifty50 scaling a new all-time high in early trades Friday, the Indian stock market turned a bit sluggish as investors chose to take some profits, but still ended the week on a positive note.The mood was quite upbeat early on following the Goods and Services Tax Council clearing all the required legislations, paving the way for implementation of the rollout of the new tax regime from July 2017. A steady trend in Asian markets too aided sentiment. While the Sensex, which rose to 29,824.62, gaining about 240 points in early trades, ended the day with a gain of 63.14 points or 0.21% at 29,648.99. The Nifty50 ended up 6.35 points or 0.07% at 9160.05, nearly 60 points off a new all-time high of 9218.40. Both Sensex and the Nifty50 gained more than 2.5% in the week.In the forex market, the rupee was trading at 65.52 against the U.S. dollar around late afternoon, down 11 paise from its previous close of 65.41.FMCG stocks, particularly those of cigarette and tobacco companies, had a good outing. ITC, VST Industries and Godfrey Phillips rallied on the GST Council’s proposal to cap the cess on tobacco and cigarettes.The cap on cess on tobacco and cigarettes will be 290% or Rs 4170 per 1000 cigarette sticks, or a combination of both, indicate reports.A few stocks from Information Technology, metal, power and realty sectors too closed on a firm note. Healthcare, automobile, bank, capital goods, oil and consumer durables stocks turned in a mixed performance. Telecom and healthcare stocks traded weak. FMCG heavyweight ITC ended nearly 5% up. VST Industries jumped 7.55%. Vadilal Industries, Kohinoor, Colgate Palmolive, Dabur India, Britannia Industries, Emami and GlaxoSmithKline Consumer Healthcare also ended on a firm note. In the IT space, Infosys gained about 1%. HCL Technologies ended 1.3% up, KPIT gained 1.85% and Tata Elxsi ended 4.7% up. Wipro, MindTree and Tata Consultancy Services posted modest gains. Telecom stocks Idea Cellular (down 4.4%), Bharti Airtel (down 3.7%), TTML (down 2.4%) and Tata Communications (down nearly 2%) declined sharply. Bharti Infratel declined marginally and Reliance Communications edged up slightly, while MTNL gained 3.3%.Among automobile stocks, Maruti Suzuki and Eicher Motors posted modest gains. Mahindra & Mahindra, Ashok Leyland, Bajaj Auto and Tata Motors declined by 0.8% – 1.4%, while Hero Motocorp settled around its previous closing price. In the banking space, Punjab National Bank, Bank of Baroda, State Bank of India, Federal Bank, Yes Bank and ICICI Bank shed 1.3% – 2.1%. Kotak Bank declined marginally, while Axis Bank, IndusInd Bank and HDFC Bank ended modestly higher.The market breadth was weak at close. Out of 3021 stocks traded on BSE, 1243 stocks advanced. 1575 stocks declined and 203 stocks ended flat.
December 19, 2024
