Stock Views: Amit Gupta's top picks for trade today

Amit Gupta of ICICI Direct spoke to CNBC-TV18 about his views on the Indian stock market. Expressing his positive view on different sectors Gupta says, "It is possible that the laggards which had seen very heavy short build-up before may start performing. I can pick three sectors here: metal, real estate and oil and gas."

Also Read: Expect 14-15% earnings growth in 2013: Motilal Oswal Below is the verbatim transcript of Gupta’s interview to CNBC-TV18 Q: There might be quite a bit of excitement in the banking space. Do you like Federal Bank from that space? A: If you look at the private banking, what we have observed over the last couple of weeks is that there has been continuous long additions. Federal Bank has not been able to perform that much to the extent of the other peers. The cash buying has started somewhere close to Rs 470-480 levels and the long build-up also have started from those levels only. The stock may move towards Rs 535 in the coming sessions. So, your stop loss should be below Rs 480. Look for this target in the coming sessions. Q: Any specific heavyweights on which you saw long addition or huge short covering yesterday? A: It is possible that the laggards which had seen very heavy short build-up before may start performing. I can pick three sectors here: metal, real estate and oil and gas. We have already seen what is happening in metals. It started from the non-ferrous and now it is slowly coming down to the ferrous stocks like Tata Steel has come above Rs 410 levels. We are positive on DLF from real estate because Rs 215 was a very critical level, it was a good retracement of the recent upmove we saw towards Rs 226-227. Another thing is Rs 220 call was heavily sold in DLF in last couple of months and we were not seeing closure in that to that extent. In this upmove, we have seen that the closure has also started in the strike. So, it is possible that DLF may see another 5-8 percent of upmove from here. We are positive on Reliance Industries in oil and gas space. This is one of the heavyweights which have not shown its colour so far. If market has set a platform for the stocks to perform, it is possible that Reliance also may see some kind of short covering because we know what kind of positional shorts have been there in the stock. Once that starts covering, the stock may go up to Rs 880-885 levels.