European cues dampened mkt move; no bullish signs: Udayan

The broader market continued to underperform for the third day, running the midcap index down nearly 1%, and that did not help the overall mood either. The advance-decline ratio was not good, and lots of individual stocks were down 20% today.

There were winners today in the large cap space. ICICI Bank for one came with a very strong set of numbers and that was rewarded with an up move. Some of the metal stocks which had been hammered over the last few days, like Tata Steel, Sterlite and Hindalco, managed to come back. Some of the private sector banks like Axis Bank and HDFC Bank also rose in sympathy with ICICI Bank. Tata Motors and Bharti also recovered somewhat.

The disappointment today was with the public sector banks because of lots of asset quality disappointments, so names like PNB, BoB and even SBI were down. Even infrastructure did not looked particularly good; stocks like JP Associates, BHEL and Reliance Infra were also down today.

But the key disappoint was the poor market breadth. Once again names like Subex, Parsvnath were down 20%, Pipavav recovered a bit. So those individual broker-related problems continue to linger in the market.

That aside, Sun TV was down very sharply on the news of the CBI charges against its promoter which has been reported in the media.

In banks, Union Bank led the way with a 8% fall today and then Central Bank, Dena Bank, Bank of India all followed, so a very disappointing session for public sector banks.

Also, Deccan Chronicle got hammered today and some of the sugar stocks like Renuka and Bajaj Hindustan were down. R Comm continued to slip lower and today hit Rs 54.

On the way up, LIC Housing, Yes Bank and Titan to a certain extent were names which did not do badly. But otherwise, it was a dismal day for the broader market and for the Nifty too. So despite the 50 point gain, it probably was not an outright bullish kind of a take away at all going into the weekend.