Bumpy road ahead

The week gone by saw expiry of May series futures which turned out to be a tame affair. The markets slipped for the remaining four days of the month and rallied strongly on Friday, the first day of trading for the June series. The up move also coincided with data on the GDP which came later in the evening and was positive with GDP being 7.5 per cent in the fourth quarter and at 7.3 per cent for the financial year 2014-15.

Governor Raghuram Rajan (l) will chair the RBI meeting tomorrow for its monetary policy review. Pic/PTI

The Sensex lost 129.06 points or 0.46 per cent to close at 27,828.44 points. The Nifty lost 25.30 points or 0.30 per cent to close at 8,433.65 points. The broader indices saw the BSE100, BSE200 and BSE500 lose 0.36 per cent, 0.10 per cent and 0.06 per cent. The BSEMIDCAP gained 0.91 per cent while BSESMALLCAP gained 0.65 per cent.

Up and down
In sectoral gainers, the top gainer was BSECON DUR up 2.54 per cent followed by BSEPSU up 2.03 per cent, BSEOIL&GAS 1.54 per cent and BSEBANKEX 1.51 per cent. Then losers were led by BSEIT down 1.51 per cent, BSEMETAL 1.34 per cent and BSEREALTY 1.28 per cent.

India's central bank is expected to cut interest rates for a third time in five months when it meets this week, confident that inflation is stable enough to weather the monsoon. Pics/AFP

In individual stocks, the top gainer was Bharti Airtel up 7.66 per cent, followed by BHEL 7.54 per cent. The OMC's or Oil Marketing Companies reported a great set of numbers and saw HPCL rise 9.85 per cent and BPCL rise 8.70 per cent.

On the losing side were Tata Motors down 6.40 per cent and Vedanta the new name for Sesa Sterlite down 5.18 per cent. Tech Mahindra lost 16.66 per cent after a poor set of numbers. The Amy series futures expired at 8,319 points a monthly gain of 137.50 points or 1.68 per cent against the previous expiry of 8,181 points.

The results season is over and very clearly there is a disappointment that corporate India has not performed to the mark. There is more that should have happened and therefore the market has been in some sort of a downward mode over the last few weeks. The Indian rupee was under pressure and lost 29 paisa or 0.46 per cent to close at R 63.81.

Tepid start
Shares of PNC Infratech Limited listed on the bourses and had a tepid start but recovered as the week progressed to close higher by about 5.8 per cent. Primary markets have been quite after seven issue shave listed over the last two months.

The performance has been a mixed bag with four of the seven issues trading at a discount to issue price. This kind of poor performance brings apathy towards the primary market and makes fund raising that much more difficult. The week ahead sees Reserve Bank of India (RBI) Governor Raghuram Rajan chairing a meeting on Tuesday, June 2 for a monetary policy review.

Everybody has been clamouring for a rate cut and it appears the governor will oblige with cuts in CRR, Repo and Reverse Repo. The icing to the cake would be if SLR too is cut in a phased manner as is typical of RBI.

Today, would see markets opening on a positive note on the back of encouraging GDP numbers released on Friday evening and the expectation of a rate cut on Tuesday. If the cut materialises the momentum would be good for the Nifty to rise another 200 points before profit taking comes in. Ride the markets and enjoy the ensuing rally.

Arun Kejriwal is founder of the Mumbai-based advisory firm Kejriwal Research & Investment Services Pvt Ltd. Readers are invited to read more about these and other issues on his website https://ak57.in

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