Market to remain firm in coming week: Networth

Market Roundup

The markets remained strong in the shortened week ended December 28, with both BSE and NSE rebounded nearly 5.5% each. With expiry of F&O contract and end of the calendar year BSE Sensex climbed up by 1,044 points to close at 20,206.95. The NSE Nifty rose 313 points, or 5.43%, w-o-w to close at 6,079.7. Mid cap and small cap stocks attracted investors and outperformed the major indices with gain of 6.08% and 9.21% respectively.

Amongst the sectoral indices metals and real estate indices were the best performers while auto ended on flat note. All the sectoral indices ended in green. The decline in production of crude, petroleum refinery products, cement, and steel has pulled down the growth of the six infrastructure industries to 4.5% in October 2007, compared with a growth of 9.9% in the same month last year. According to data released by the Government on Thursday, the production of crude petroleum registered a negative growth of 0.1% in October this year as against 9.3% in October last year.

US Markets ended lower largely on account of higher jobless data and poor durable goods sales. During a very short trading week, Dow Jones ended negative by 0.68% and Nasdaq down by 0.56%. Most of the Asian markets witnessed mixed trade with Shanghai Comp ending positive. A knee jerk reaction was expected on account of Pakistan politics. However market didn`t react much to the news. FTSE ended positive by 0.85%, Nikkei up by 0.33%, Hang Seng down by 0.93% and Shanghai up by 3.13% during the week.

Inflation for the week ended Dec. 15 fell to 3.45%, against 3.65% in the previous week, due to fall in prices of fruits, vegetables and textile products. It was lower than expectation of 3.69% according to Reuters` poll, which reinforce that interest rates are likely to remain steady at a central bank review next month.

The rupee appreciated by 0.3% to 39.44 against the dollar during the week due to fresh capital inflows. Foreign funds bought around USD 640 million of Indian shares in the first two sessions of this week compared with selling USD 1.3 billion of stocks in four sessions last week.

Outlook

Networth Stock Broking expects market to remain firm in coming week on expectations of the fresh foreign inflows post holiday season.