Skip to main content

Profit-taking weakens metals, mining stocks - The Hindu Busienss Line

Metals and mining stocks continued to weaken for two consecutive days on profit booking largely by institutional investors. The BSE Metal Index declined by 0.39 per cent, but its loss on weekly basis was lower at 0.24 per cent. However, steel stocks at Tuesday’s close managed to pare down the losses compared with that on Monday. Aluminium and zinc stocks closed lower.
Iron ore miner, Sesa Goa, which led the fall on Monday, shed much of its weakness as an apprehension of ban on exports dissipated on Tuesday. It nevertheless finished in the red declining 0.8 per cent. It lost around 10 per cent on Monday.
According to Mr Pawan Burde, metals and mining stock analyst at Angel Broking, this short-term weakness has come after a rally last week in metal stock and could be deceptive.Export tax hopes
Agreeing that LME inventory levels have recently gone up in base metals and had put pressure on the local aluminium and zinc stocks somewhat, he said the steel stocks could strengthen further this week if the Government removed export tax as expected on Dalal Street. Moreover, three-month self-imposed restraint on price rise by steel makers ends this month.
According to analysts, metal stocks did find buyers at lower levels on Tuesday.
According to Mr Ajay Jaiswal, President (investment strategies) at Microsec Financial Services said portfolio churning and profit booking was behind weakness in the overall metal stocks. “Steel stocks particularly have been affected by delivery based selling. But on weekly terms, steel stocks have outperformed the benchmark indices”.
Analysts also felt that the input and power cost increases have generally been dragging down the sentiment for the manufacturing sector players.
The Government’s earlier move of restricting selected steel exports has been factored in, analysts said.
Tata Steel closed down 0.73 per cent on Tuesday against its loss of 3.86 per cent on Monday. SAIL moved up 1.56 per cent against a decline of 3.54 per cent in the previous session, while Ispat Industries also 1.5 per cent against its loss 4.46 per cent on Monday.
Jindal Steel had finished down 5.15 per cent on Monday but today moved up 0.41 per cent. Bhushan Steel, however, finished further down 4.24 per cent after it had lost 3.52 per cent on Monday. JSW recovered 0.78 per cent. It was down 2 per cent at close on Monday.
Hindalco finished up 1.12 per cent. Yesterday it had declined by 5.05 per cent. Nalco increased its loss and was down 3.95 per cent. It had shed 5.11 per cent on Monday. Sterlite moved down 1.61 over its loss of 1.95 per cent on the previous session. Hindustan Zinc also closed lower on Tuesday by 0.29 per cent.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

RBS picks up 0.60% stake in Gateway Distriparks

The Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) has picked up 0.60% stake in logistic services provider -- Gateway Distriparks. The bank has bought 6.40 lakh shares in the company for a total consideration of Rs 8.32 crore. Gateway Distriparks, incorporated in 1994, is engaged in the business of warehousing, container freight stations, providing handling and clearance of sea borne export-import trade in containerized form.

Day End Report

The Sensex opened with a huge downward gap of 250 points at 13,856, and soon touched a low of 13,731. Another rise in repo rate and Cash Reserve Ratio by the RBI sparked off heavy sell-off in opening trades. However, fresh buying at lower levels helped the index recover all its losses by mid noon trades. A fresh round of buying in late trades saw the index surge to a high of 14,249 - up 518 points from the days low. The Sensex finally settled with a gain of 113 points at 14,220. The NSE Nifty ended with a gain of 60 points at 4,251. The market breadth was marginally positive- out of 2707 stocks traded, 1,370 advanced, 1,264 declined and 73 were unchanged today. Reliance Communications (RCom) zoomed 7.2% at Rs 509. Tata Steel surged 4.5% at Rs 743. DLF and Reliance Infra gained 4.2% each at Rs 458 and Rs 945, respectively. TCS and Bharti Airtel advanced 4% each at Rs 877 and Rs 780, respectively. Ranbaxy was up 3.8% at Rs 545. BHEL gained 3.7% at Rs 1,442. Reliance advanced 3.4% to Rs 2...

Auto industry records highest-ever sales in Jan

Riding on the back of economic growth, easy availability of finance and the continuing fiscal stimulus, the domestic auto industry has posted the highest ever monthly sales in January. The strong growth is both in terms of passenger car volumes and the total vehicle sales. According to Society of Automobile Manufacturers (SIAM) data, the passenger car segment has posted a 32 per cent growth in domestic sales at 145,905 units in January, over the same month last year. The last highest-ever monthly sales in the segment were in March 2009, when it sold 129,358 units. Meanwhile, overall sales across the industry grew 45 per cent at 1,114,157 units. The earlier record of highest ever monthly sales was in October 2006, when the industry had sold 1,017,198 units. Individually, the umbrella passenger vehicle segment posted a 37 per cent growth, while the commercial vehicle (CV) segment grew 131 per cent. Also, the two-wheeler and three-wheeler segments rose 43 and 47 per cent, respectively.