Can mkt continue to inch higher?

It has not been a bad closing for the week. It was a sort of a mine field today with inflation, IIP numbers etc, so at the end of it, one would have to say while we might have done better on the promise of on how things were panning out midday but it has not been such a bad day after all. We closed about a 100 odd points up on the Sensex at around that 15,800 mark and the Nifty did not quite clear 4,800 but not very far from it at around that 4,780 mark. Though we did trade above 4,800 today, it retraced a bit towards the end of the session. The big thing is that we got a really bad inflation number at 7.41% but the market did not fall despite that. In fact it climbed the back of the IIP numbers which was better than expected and actually went up quite a bit in the middle of the day.

In that it might have ignored bad news today which generally is construed as a positive sign. The volumes were okay, a bit better than yesterday at just about 10% higher at Rs 55,000 crore. The breadth was okay nothing special with 600 to 500 advances-declines but many largecap names particularly in the oil and gas and energy space withReliance, RPL, Cairn, GAIL - that were hot in the market today. We of course had a bit of strength in the capital goods sector that would have been expected after the IIP numbers -L&T, BHEL, ABB, Siemens, even some of the power stocks like Tata Power and Reliance Energy - they did not look too bad.

So quite an okay day and for the week too it wasn’t such a bad one. About 450 points up on the week - that’s Sensex, which is about 3% week-on-week which is not bad and the Nifty was up 3% as well during the week just about a 125 odd points. The midcap index was up 4.5% for the week. So once again the midcaps have outperformed the Sensex and Nifty like last week, which is quite encouraging.

Technology was a bit weak led by Infosys because that was the last chance for long traders to wind up positions before the guidance came in on Tuesday and that’s pretty much what happened or must have happened today. Gujarat Ambuja Cement was a bit weak perhaps because of the cement export ban. Hindustan Unilever was a bit soft and ICICI Bank a bit soft as well. On midcaps there were good moves in Orchid and GVK Power and in Hindustan Construction and Punj Lloyd, Reliance Capital did okay today. Sasken had a good run. Global Vectra ever since it announced the rights has been looking smart and we had a couple of flyers like Gateway Distriparks andPritish Nandy Communications.

Private banks were a bit soft today and that was not the hot space of action in fact banking generally perhaps because of the inflation number was a bit sulky today. All in all, it could have been better but it is not bad. We have closed the week 3% up, so something positive to takeaway from it. But as we enter earnings season in full tilt next week, can the market continue to inch higher.