The Indian stock market saw some profit taking in the week ended 24 March 2016, after having rallied to record highs a week earlier. Largely muted global cues and a lack of positive triggers from the domestic front rendered price movements quite sluggish for most part of the week.After recording losses in the first three sessions, the market bounced back a bit in the later part of the week, but still ended the week on the negative side. The BSE benchmark Sensex ended the week with a loss of 227.59 points or 0.76% at 29,421.40. The Nifty50 of the National Stock Exchange declined 52.05 points or 0.56% to 9108.00.Midcap and smallcap stocks turned in a mixed performance last week. The BSE Midcap index ended down 0.31%, while the Smallcap index edged up by about 0.5%.After losing about 130 points and 33 points respectively, on the first two sessions last week, the Sensex plunged nearly 320 points on Wednesday amid rising concerns about the US government’s trade and economic policies. The final two sessions saw the benchmark gain 165 points and 89 points, respectively, as traders indulged in some bargain hunting and short-covering. Confident remarks by the finance minister Arun Jaitley about India’s economy and the statement that the government and the central bank have devised plans to strengthen the banking sector aided sentiment.Bank stocks, despite seeing some strong buying during the later part of the week, ended mostly lower. ICICI Bank declined by about 2%, Axis Bank ended 5.4% down and HDFC Bank edged down marginally, while State Bank of India ended modestly higher.Pharma stocks Cipla and Sun Pharmaceutical Industries declined marginally. Dr Reddy’s Laboratories ended more than 4% down, while Lupin gained 1.2%.In the IT space, which saw a mixed trend, Tata Consultancy Services declined nearly 4% and Infosys ended 0.8% down, while Wipro gained about 1.75%. GAIL India added 1.6%, NTPC moved up 2.6% and Coal India gained nearly 3%. Reliance Industries ended 1.1% down and Tata Steel declined 2.1%.Telecom stock Bharti Airtel shed 1.8%. The company announced last week that it has entered into a definitive agreement with Tikona Digital Networks (Tikona) to acquire Tikona’s 4G business including broadband wireless access (BWA) spectrum and 350 sites, in five telecom circles for about Rs 1600 crore. The announcement was made after market hours on Thursday, 23 March 2017.Automobile stocks Maruti Suzuki and Bajaj Auto declined by 3.1% and 2.6%, respectively. Mahindra & Mahindra and Tata Motors too ended notably lower, while Hero Motocorp gained more than 1%. Housing finance stock HDFC and FMCG major Hindustan Unilever ended little changed.In economic news, data released by the government on Thursday showed that India’s current account deficit stood at $7.9 billion (1.4% of GDP) in the third quarter of this financial year. That was higher than $7.1 billion (1.4% of GDP) in the year-ago quarter and $3.4 billion (0.6% of GDP) in the preceding quarter. Last week, the Union Cabinet approved the four Goods and Services Tax (GST) related bills on 20 March 2017, namely, the Central Goods and Services Tax Bill 2017, the Integrated Goods and Services Tax Bill 2017, the Union Territory Goods and Services Tax Bill 2017 and the Goods and Services Tax (Compensation to the States) Bill 2017, moving closer to implementation of the tax from July this year.
