What's hot, what's not with mutual funds?

Nifty BSE | NSE 30/05/12 Are Mutual Funds betting on Nifty? Other Stocks in this news SpiceJet | Crompton Greaves | Bharti Airtel | Rural Electrification Corporation | Hindustan Construction Company | HDFC Bank | Axis Bank | Infosys | UltraTech Cement |

Bharti Airtel topped the selling list in terms of volume; wherein eight out of ten funds reduced exposure to this stock might be because of the company bid for Zain Telecom's Africa assets at high valuations. Bharti has offered USD 10.7 billion for that. Reliance MF sold largest quantity of shares, which were more than 41 lakh shares. In the telecom pack, however, fund houses bought Idea Cellular.

Top shares traded by MFs    (based on value)
Top 5 shares bought	Value (Rs in cr)
NTPC	594.62
Crompton Greaves	314.58
HDFC Bank	289.94
Hathway Cable	171.27
SBI	153.38
Top 5 shares sold	Value (Rs in cr)
Axis Bank	(414.10)
Infosys	(281.87)
UltraTech Cement	(246.47)
Hero Honda	(244.27)
Bharti Airtel	(217.25)

HCC was also among top three sold stocks; six funds offloaded shares of this company and Kotak MF emerged as the top seller with over 25 lakh shares being sold. In the construction segment, Gammon Infrastructure and Gammon India were bought while Jyoti Structures, Nagarjuna Construction, IRB Infra and Noida Toll were sold.

The second top sold stock in terms of value was Infosys Technologies; in which nine out of ten funds reduced exposure to this stock and Prudential ICICI MF was the top seller with more than 4.7 lakh shares being offloaded. Fund houses also sold TCS while bought Sterlite Technologies, Infinite Computer and MphasiS.

UltraTech Cement was among top three sold stocks in terms of value. Four out of five funds made selling in the stock and Reliance MF sold over 15 lakh shares of this company. In the cement space, however, funds bought India cements, Ambuja Cements, JK Lakshmi and Prism Cement.

In the media segment, four fund houses bought shares of Hathway Cable and Datacom, which launched IPO and listed in the month of February. These funds might be received shares in allotment at Rs 240, at lower end of price band of Rs 240-265 per share. On February 26, it closed at Rs 201 and while writing this article on March 11, it was at Rs 216, which was way below issue price of Rs 240.

Among other media stocks, Sun TV was bought while IBN Broadcast, Zee News, Jagran Prakashan, Dish TV and Zee Entertainment were sold.
In the sugar space, funds increased exposure to Shree Renuka Sugars while reduced Balrampur Chini and Bajaj Hindusthan.

DB Realty and Vascon Engineers from the realty space purchased whereas HDIL and DLF sold by mutual funds.

In the metal pack, ISMT was bought while Tata Steel and Sterlite Industries were sold. In the auto space, Ashok Leyland, Hero Honda and M&M were in the selling list while Apollo Tyres was on the buying list of MFs.

In the FMCG space, funds sold shares of ITC, United Breweries and Radico Khaitan.

Stocks were re-aligned in the oil & gas, fertilizer & chemical and pharma sectors.

In the oil & gas segment, mutual funds bought Cairn, HPCL, GAIL and Petronet LNG whereas reduced exposure to ONGC.

Among fertilizer and chemical stocks, Chambal Fertiliser and Tata Chemical were purchased while United Phosphorous was sold by funds.

In the healthcare segment, fund houses increased exposure to Cipla while reduced to Ranbaxy Labs.

Mutual funds might have received shares of Jubilant Foodworks in IPO allotment. The company launched initial public offering (IPO) during January 18-20, 2010 and listed those equity shares on February 8 with 66% premium.

By Sunil Shankar Matkar.....