Expert views: Trading tips on 10 largecap stocks

Moneycontrol Bureau

The Indian market is stuck in a range. It is struggling to clear resistances. It remained listless on Thursday. Investors were sceptical due to stormy beginning of the winter session of Parliament. The Sensex was up 56.96 points to close at 18,517.34. Meanwhile, the Nifty rose 12.95 points and ended at 5,627.75. Moneycontrol brings to you some of the recommendations given by experts that will help you cash in on the many opportunities available. Stocks picks for today: Sudarshan Sukhani, s2analytics.com is bullish on Union Bank of India. "The stock had a fantastic rally from Rs 150 to Rs 230 and then went through a brief decline. That decline is over now. It is now resuming its uptrend. This uptrend should take it to new highs. It’s a good stock," he elaborates. Sukhani has a ‘buy’ call on Britannia Industries. "Sometimes the blue chip stocks gives significant and stupendous breakouts all of a sudden, maybe Britannia will do it, if not today, next week. It’s readily poised for that. It has made a bullish head and shoulder pattern, after a small correction," he asserts. Sukhani is also betting on Coal India. "The stock went through a correction and then it stopped falling. That itself was a first sign that this is not a bear market. It is not a deep correction, it’s a shallow correction and then we have seen a double bottom. That’s a very interesting pattern because normally double bottom comes after big declines, but this one has come on a small correction. It is not willing to go up. So, I could sometime classify it as a micro double bottom, a small pattern, but it has bullish overtones. So, one buy it. If the market is willing to go up today Coal India could be a major contributor." Also read: Is it time to look at sugar stocks? Brokerage calls: Stock: Bharti Airtel Brokerage: UBS Rating: Buy Target: Rs 425 Rationale: The stock looks well positioned to gain from the inflection in pricing and regulatory landscape in the Indian telecom space. The realisations per minute are likely to improve significantly due to a reduction in free promotional minutes and headline tariff increases. Stock: HUL Brokerage: Macquarie Rating: Outperform Target: Rs 620 Rationale: The stock has corrected 10 percent, since earnings, due to concerns on sales growth fatigue in the personal products category. However, the company's recent initiatives suggest that the growth uptrend will persist. Stock: Reliance Industries Brokerage: CLSA Rating: Outperform Target: Rs 850 Rationale: Singapore GRM benchmarks have fallen up to USD 2.5 per barrel QoQ and this has impacted the stock. However, their Reliance GRM tracker is up over USD 1 per barrel QoQ on the back of improvement in spreads of Naphtha and LPG as well as lower input costs due to rise in light heavy crude spreads and severe decline in fuel oil spread. They say this should allow reliance to outperform benchmark GRMs in Q3. _PAGEBREAK_ Stock: NTPC Brokerage: Bank of America Merrill Lynch Rating: Underperform Target: Rs 153 Rationale: The 9.5 percent stake sale by the government is a potential overhang, given the weak execution and its rich valuation. Stock: GSK Pharma Brokerage: Nomura Rating: Underperform Target: Rs 1,795 Rationale: Under the new pharma pricing policy cleared by the Cabinet, the prices of essential drugs are likely to fall by 15-20 percent versus earlier expectations of 8-12 percent. GSK Pharma will be the worst hit due to the new policy. Stock: Tata Steel Brokerage: JPMorgan Rating: Overweight Target: Rs 530 Rationale: According to them, the price hikes in Europe atleast signal that steel prices have likely bottomed out, and from here price hike announcements by various companies, should allow re-stocking demand to come back. They see that the benefits of this flowing into Tata Steel's Q4 numbers. Stock: Cipla Brokerage: CLSA Rating: Outperform Target: Rs 400 Rationale: They say Cipla's proposal to acquire 51 percent of Cipla Medpro for USD 220 million seems attractive for Cipla India as the latter could drive synergies between two entities, considering it has been manufacturing partner for Medpro for decades. The acquisition is reasonably valued at 1.7x price to sales, 11x trailing earnings and provides Cipla direct footing in South African branded generic market. Stock: Sun Pharma Brokerage: Nomura Rating: Neutral Target: Rs 690 Rationale: They believe the new proposal to cap prices based on the arithmetic average is incrementally negative, although they say it is unlikely to be materially disruptive. The earlier proposal impacted the FY14 base business EBIDTA of Cadila, Ranbaxy and Cipla by 5-8 percent and 3 percent for Sun, Lupin, Dr Reddy's. The new proposal will have higher negative impact of 6-10 percent for Cadila, Ranbaxy and Cipla and up to 5 percent EBITDA impact for Sun, Lupin and Dr Reddy's.