Charmed by Infy, market gain 5 pc in the week

Mumbai: The Indian equity market staged an excellent comeback this week, rallying more than 5 per cent in three out of five sessions. The market rode on technology stocks post Infosys' Q2 results and held on to the gains in anticipation of good quarterly numbers from TCS and Reliance Industries.

It was the best week since the beginning of last month. Talks of a likely bailout plan for Europe in the first week of November and a slightly-improved fiscal deficit figures of Greece acted as catalysts to investor sentiment across globe.

Today, the 30-share BSE Sensex rose 1.18 per cent or 198.77 points, to close at 17,082.69 and the 50-share NSE Nifty jumped 54.45 points or 1.07 per cent, to end at 5,132.30, supported by technology, oil & gas, telecom, FMCG, auto (barring Maruti) and private financial stocks.

Global cues were quite supportive; European markets like France's CAC, Germany's DAX and Britain's DAX were trading 1 per cent higher. Dow Jones futures too gained 93 points.

Back home, despite a marginal cut, September inflation stayed at the same level as last month, at 9.72 per cent as against 9.78 per cent in August.

Jahangir Aziz, Asia Economic Research at JPMorgan says he is confident to see a decline in inflation taking place towards 7-7.5 per cent mark by March of next year. However, he says it is unlikely to last. "Unless, we really do something about the various concerns the drop in inflation will not stay longer. There will be a dip in the first quarter of next year after that it is probably back to where we are," he believes.

For now, he says the Reserve Bank has not completed its rate hike and hopes it does not pause as yet, He sees a 25 bps rate hike coming from the RBI.

Technology stocks showed outstanding performance ahead of second quarter earnings of TCS on Monday. Investors turned bullish on technology stocks after seeing strong outlook from country's second largest software services exporter Infosys this week. TCS and Wipro surged nearly 4 per cent. Infosys was up 1.7 per cent and HCL Tech up 3 per cent.

Heavyweight Reliance Industries, ahead of its quarterly results tomorrow, gained 2.4 per cent. Cairn India too rose 3 per cent and ONGC was up just 0.7 per cent.

Bharti Airtel also joined the bulls' party, rallying 3.7 per cent. Cigarette major ITC jumped 1.6 per cent after the company hiked prices of cigarette brands like Benson & Hedges and Capstan by 9 per cent and 12 per cent, respectively.

Private sector banks stocks like ICICI Bank, HDFC Bank and Axis Bank were up 0.7-1.5 per cent. From the auto space, Tata Motors and Bajaj Auto rallied 2-3 per cent; M&M and Hero Motocorp gained over 0.6 per cent.

However, metals and mining stocks saw huge selling pressure. Coal India, Tata Steel and Sesa Goa were down 3-4 per cent. Sterlite Industries fell 1 per cent while Jindal Steel turned biggest gainer among largecaps, rising 5 per cent.

Maruti Suzuki lost 3 per cent due to relentless labour problems at its Manesar plant.

The broader indices closed marginally higher; about 1463 shares advanced as against 1335 shares declined on BSE.

Total traded turnover was more than Rs 1.25 lakh crore.