Sensex, Nifty marginally down; Ashok Leyland zooms by more than 14 per cent, Bharat Forge gains 15.7 per cent

The Sensex opened in green and stayed like that for the first couple of hours after which it slipped owing to profit booking. It closed at 38310 levels, down by 59 points or 0.15 per cent whereas Nifty closed at the important support level of 11300 levels, down by eight points or 0.07 per cent.

The day’s session saw metal stocks rally along with defence sector-related stocks attracting investors attention while banks continued to remain under pressure continuing with their months' old underperformance.

The hotel and airline stocks i.e hospitality sector were the highlight of Thursday’s session with EIH Ltd and Indian Hotels gaining 12.23 per cent and 11.90 per cent respectively. The Interglobe Aviation was up by 12.32 per cent and Spice Jet was seen inching up by 2.23 per cent.

The European markets traded in red today with FTSE slipping 0.89 per cent, DAX trading down by 0.15 per cent and CAC 40 sliding down by 0.10 per cent at the time of filing this report. Moving on to Asian markets, Nikkei inched up smartly by over 1.78 per cent with Kospi gaining  0.21 per cent and Shanghai up by 0.04 per cent. Hang Seng was marginally down by 0.05 per cent while ASX 200 was down by 0.67 per cent.

The top Sensex gainers in today’s trade were L&T (4.49 per cent), Titan (3.62 per cent), Tech Mahindra (0.89 per cent), Ultra Tech Cement (0.89 per cent) and ONGC (0.64 per cent) The top Sensex losers were made up of Bharti Airtel (-2.35 per cent), Sun Pharma (- 2.11 per cent), NTPC (-1.69 per cent), ITC (-1.31 per cent) and SBI (-0.74 per cent).

The BSE Small-Cap index and BSE Mid-Cap Index outperformed on the down day for Sensex by clocking gains of 0.76 per cent and 1.59  per cent respectively. Hindustan Aeronautics was the top Mid-Cap gainer, up by  17.96  per cent followed by Bharat Forge and Indian Hotels which were up by more than 12 per cent each. Natco Pharma, Adani Transmission and Union Bank were the top losers in the BSE Mid-Cap index.

Venkys, Eclerx and Electrotherm were the top Small-Cap gainers in today’s trading session with each stock locked in with upper circuits of 20 per cent each. On the other hand, Eros Media, Nila Infrastructure and RTN power were the top Small-Cap losers in today’s volatile trading session.

The day’s session belonged to the capital goods sector led by the likes of Bharat Forge, Hindustan Aeronautics, LT, BHEL and NBCC pushing the BSE capital goods index higher by more than 3.8 per cent.

The BSE consumer durables index was second best after BSE capital goods, gaining more than 2 per cent with Titan, Voltas, Crompton and Symphony contributing the most to the index’s gains. Hindalco, JSW Steel and Vedanta pushed the BSE Metal index higher by one per cent in today’s trading session.

BSE Oil & GAS, BSE Realty and BSE Power index closed marginally in green with BSE Bankex, BSE Telecom and BSE Healthcare closing in red by 0.26 per cent, 1.49 per cent and 0.65 per cent respectively.