US jobs data, Re at 61.20/$ keeps market on edge: Udayan

The US jobs report triggered off fresh fears of quantitative easing (QE) withdrawal or tapering as early as September this year, resulting in a difficult start to trade, says Udayan Mukherjee, managing editor, CNBC-TV18. US bond yields shot up over the weekend and that led to some selling in emerging markets again.

Also read: Nifty unlikely to go beyond 5900; see US outperform: Udayan Markets like Hong Kong and China performed poorly this morning, with the Indian market picking up the weakness from there. Market movement was flat, though the Nifty did dip below 5800 during the course of the day Below is the edited transcript of his market wrap on CNBC-TV18 The market started the day with a gap down of about 50 points, and never quite recovered during the course of the day. It wasn’t a volatile session. The market closed pretty much close to where it opened up in the morning. On Monday, oil stocks came under a lot of pressure. The fact is that geopolitical tensions in Egypt saw crude oil go up to about USD 108 per barrel, and stocks like Bharat Petroleum Corporation Limited (BPCL), Hindustan Petroleum Corporation Limited (HPCL) and even Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC) have come under a lot of pressure. The bank and the oil index were the two weakest links in the market on Monday. That aside, we had large cap names like National Thermal Power Corporation(NTPC), Coal India, Tata Motors, HDFC, JP Associates coming under a lot of pressure. On the winning side, there were a few stocks. Cement stocks did not do too badly, HCL Technologies did quite well, and Bharat Heavy Electricals Limited (Bhel) and IndusInd Bank also witnessed some buying. Midcaps did not do well, though the midcap index fell less than the Nifty did on Monday. There were a few winners like Reliance Communication on the back of real estate demerger news. Reliance Power, Mangalore Chemicals, Hexaware  and Crompton Greaves saw a bit of buying, but real estate stocks did not do very well at all. Names like Unitech, HDIL, Indiabulls Real Estate were down again. JM Financial, Dish TV and LIC Housing were some of the other stocks which came off on Monday. All in all, a disappointing session of trade but more so for the currency which fell to 61.20 to the dollar on Monday morning. It recovered during the course of the day but still remained dangerously close to that 61 mark. That was one of the reasons the market was quite jittery on Monday.