Stock-specific market pays no heed to earnings; moves up

It has been a steady day of trade for the market today says Udayan Mukherjee, managing editor, CNBC-TV18. The Nifty inched higher to close above 5400 again, aided by a benign 6.55% inflation reading for January.

The past seven days has seen the Nifty sluggish in a trading range, but it has refused to correct or give up any ground. Today, for the second day, it closed above that 5400 mark. So though the close was not bad, but it is how the individual stocks fared that was the talking point of the day.

Today's star was Tata Motors deservedly, after a very strong set of numbers at Rs 3,400 crore, way above street expectations. SBI was another number which did not look too bad. Yesterday, the stock fell 2%, but today, it was quick to bounce back 3-4%. Hindalco was yet another strong stock today.

Tata Motors and the inflation numbers seem to have sparked off a rally in auto companies, so Maruti, M&M, Hero Motors all these stocks were up. Reliance Communication and IDFC were other names which did well.
There were not too many losers today. Cipla did badly after poor numbers, down 5%, and even Tata Power had a very ordinary session.

Today was a good day for a lot of individual stocks. The market breadth, the advance decline ratio will not tell you that, but so many stocks were up 7%-10% that looked like a very vibrant market.

Lanco started in the morning with a big set of results and that stock closed 16-17% higher and remained the top traded company throughout the day on the NSE. Other results from the infrastructure space like GVK and IVRCL were not that special, but the stock reactions were. IVRCL was up 6%, GVK moved up 5% today and even Nagarjuna Construction which has very ordinary numbers has moved up a lot in the last couple of days. In essence, the market seems to be discounting all bad news in terms of earnings and generally tending to move higher even on the face of it.

Renuka moved up quite well again today on the back of numbers which did not look too bad. Jain Irrigation had a big rally. Many of the bank stocks like UCO Bank, Allahabad Bank and South Indian Bank have been quite lively today. Sasken, on the buyback, looked very good.

Indiabulls Realty, United Spirits, PTC, PFC and Hanung Toys were other companies which did quite well. 

The losers- Suzlon has been giving up ground post the results. GATI has had a couple of really bad sessions and Adani Enterprises, Voltas and Crompton also gave up some recent gains. But it was not a bad day for the market, particularly if you are mapping sectors like auto, infrastructure and even select banking stocks.