Not a great day for trade; earnings led to disappointments

It was not a great day of trade as there was a bit of a pullback towards the end, said Udayan Mukherjee, Managing Editor, CNBC-TV18.

For a moment in the afternoon it appeared that the 5630 support for the Nifty might be tested and violated, but that did not happen today at the start of the November series.
There were some sharp reactions in large cap names like Punjab National Bank where asset quality disappointed in the earnings today and that stock took a big hammering. HUL also had a trace of disappointment towards the end because its volume growth was at 7%, lower than what the street was expecting. Large cap names like Reliance, ITC, Bharti, Jaypee Associates, SBI and all the pharmaceutical stocks corrected today.
There were not too many winners in the market, a couple of them like M&M and Hero Motocorp from the auto pack stood out. Otherwise, today was a day of disappointment for the large caps, principally led by earnings.
The market breadth was very bad at 1:3 advance decline. Midcaps did worse and the index was down nearly 1.5%. That has remained consistent throughout this week.
The real punishment was held out for CESC and Firstsource. The two companies were involved in a deal d announced yesterday and concerns about an unrelated diversification on the part of CESC led that stock down 14-15%. Firstsource too lost 10% on the open offer price disappointment.
Lanco led the slide in infrastructure stocks in the midcap space. Some of the media names like TV18, Sun TV and Zee also had weak day.
Peninsula corrected after a string of gaining sessions and names like Titan, Pantaloon, Subex, Indian Overseas Bank also had fairly sharp falls. Hindustan Construction in a departure to earnings day tradition did not do too badly because earnings today were not as bad as in previous quarters.
There were a couple of winners like LIC Housing and Prestige Estates, but there was a very slim list of gainers today from the midcap basket.
The global picture was not great, most global markets were down and that only added to the picture of mild gloom that we saw on Friday closing.