Nifty looking sapped of momentum post late Dec rally

Not a great day at all for the market. In fact in the last couple of days, the Nifty has seemed a bit sapped of momentum after December or the late December rally. It was consolidating, about managing to hold on. But today it gave up quite a bit of ground. In fact, the whole day was quite negative, right from the word 'Go'. The Nifty never managed to get back at all and the same set of stocks kept it under pressure throughout the day.

So, financials have been a big laggard sector and continues to reel under the threat of inflation and rising deposit rates. Today, ICICI Bank, HDFC, Kotak Mahindra Bank, Axis Bank, Punjab National Bank and even SBI were down. It was not a good day for the bank index and that remains the culprit. Autos too have started slackening. Today, two wheeler stocks like Bajaj Auto and Hero Honda dipped quite a bit which was another weak set. ADAG Group names showed some early promise in the year and raising hopes that they would end this streak of underperformance. But today, those stocks gave up some of the recent gains. It did not help the business as largecap names like L&T and Bharti were also on the loosing side. For a bit, in the morning, Reliance was holding out with a 1% gain but that came off because of the news from the Hardy Oil. Hardy said that Reliance was giving up on one of the oil blocks once again and hence the reliance stock gave up its gains. A very few stocks on the winning side, a couple of technology names like Hindalco, ITC, etc. But they were too few to offset the losses of the major blocks in the market. So, the Nifty was down by 70 and the Sensex was down by 200, today. Volumes seemed pretty okay. Te breadth was very bad with about 1:4 advance - declines. They were not encouraging at all as the midcap index and the smallcap index both were loosing more than a percentage point today. We did have a handful of stocks like Jindal Saw, Welspun India, Mundra Port, JBF, Navin Fluorine, Nelcast, Transformers and Rectifiers and Fame India which did well. But, the list of losers is far bigger. A lot of the financials like IFCI, IDBI Bank, Yes Bank, Syndicate Bank, Canara Bank, Allahabad Bank were down today. Coal India had a bit of a set back. In fact, it was not a good day for the Public Sector names. Coal India, Petronet LNG, REC, PFC and the entire set of stocks were down. Some of them in the financial sector looked quite wobbly. Lanco had an off day today. We had some corrections in Gujarat NRE Coke. Shasun Chemicals went up yesterday. Apollo Tyres and Chambal Fertilizers also did well but a pretty bad day for the midcaps and smallcaps. A rangebound situation perhaps 6000 to 6200 with a few good days and a few bad days. It remains quite indeterminate which way the Nifty will finally forge out.