After a day’s break, bulls were back in the driving seat as the Nifty 50 index of National Stock Exchange moved above the 11,000 mark to close the week on Friday trading session at 11,075, gaining 93 points or 0.85 per cent. The Bombay Stock Exchange’s Sensex rose 0.76 per cent to close 280.71 points higher at 37,384.99.
While Nifty moving higher by close to one percent is nothing new, the fact that it happened on a Friday indicated that Bears and traders who had short positions in the indices were jittery in carrying over their position on a weekend. For many months now, the broader market indices have been witnessing a slip on a Friday.
Those with long positions (traders who believe the market would go up) were under pressure to square their positions due to fear of negative news on the economy in general or even something company specific.
This would indicate that the market is in the oversold territory. Any positive news or change in the mood of Foreign Portfolio Investors (FPI) towards India would push up the market, thus putting a squeeze on short holders (those who believe the market would go down).
What bothered the market in the initial part of the trading day was the news which came after market hours on Thursday where Altico, a big name in real estate financing, defaulted on its interest payment to one bank. This default points to a possible stress among some of the real estate players and their financiers which they would have to face in the near term.
Some financial stocks come under pressure early on Friday, but by the end of the day many could recover their lost ground, showing that a large part of the bad news about crisis in the real estate sector had been priced-in by Dalal Street.
Another sore point for the market was that auto stocks witnessed short covering, with most of them gaining between 1 per cent and 3 per cent. The buzz in the market on Friday was that some of the consumption related stocks, which had been battered down in recent times, may see a comeback as some additional companies were indicating that their sales for August were better than anticipated.
If consumption stocks make a comeback, it would indicate that the lack of credit – which had hampered the stocks in the sector – was perhaps ending, pointing to a better future. It is consumption-related stock where FPIs have large exposures and they might stop selling, changing the sentiment in such stocks, or perhaps in the whole market.
