It was another good day for the market from yesterday’s lows. The Nifty has done a good job of climbing above 4800, staying there and closing above that on two consecutive occasions. The good bit about today’s trade is that the US markets were down this morning when we walked in, but no part of Asia looked in the sell-off mode. In fact, by the end of it, almost all Asian markets closed in the green.

Yesterday most of those markets went on very close to their January lows if it did not re-test them, they went really close to those levels. And from those January lows, most markets have shown some inclination to bounceback regardless of bad US cues, and that can only be constructive. Whether this is just a relief pullback or it has more legs to it, we will find out over the next few sessions. But today there was some show of defiance against the US weakness and we haven’t seen much of that in 2008. So today was a welcome relief.

The other good bit about today’s trade is while the largecaps did move up, 4850 plus on the Nifty and 16,000 plus on the Sensex, the broader market looked much better. Midcap index was up 4%, and the smallcap index was up nearly 4%, and meaningful gains were struck out in many of the beaten down in the midcaps and non-index large caps. That was the best bit about today’s trade.

Even the advance-decline ratio looked very good. We had about 100 odd declines to 1,000 plus advances. That’s about the best breadth we have seen. Volumes are still not convincing, just about Rs 60,000 crore. It is nothing to get terribly excited by.  So we need to do more work on that. But at least the breadth was there today.

Many largecap sectors did well, power and infrastructure particularly. L&T pulled back, and the capital goods index was up more than 5%. Power stocks like Suzlon, NTPC, Siemens, Tata Power, looked pretty good today. Crude is at USD 108/bbl-USD 109/bbl, therefore ONGC, Cairn and RPL all did well, and beaten down real estate stocks like Unitech, DLF, Indiabulls Realty, all did pretty well today.

The index would have done far better had it not been for some stocks that dragged like the odd Bharti, ICICI Bank, which is still not recovering, some of the auto stocks, and Satyam Computers, which had a bad day today.

But in the midcaps it was the momentum flyers like Ispat, IFCI, and RNRL that did well. Fertilisers, which have got hit badly, came back today. Sugar had another strong day out.  Many of the private banks, led by Kotak Mahindra, which has corrected the most did well today. So Kotak Mahindra, Axis, Yes Bank, all of them ended winners. Even IDFC and IDBI looked strong today and many other stocks like Noida Toll Bridge also got to ride.

Net-net, it is another good day for the market. Hopefully we will get some help from the US markets overnight because it looks like we are in the midst of a global pullback. How much it can carry on is something we will find out. But the last couple of days haven’t looked too bad. It has looked like the markets are in a bit of a constructive mood.