Railway Budget pulls market 255 pts ahead

Mumbai : The populist Railway Budget allowed market players to book profit in companies which would benefit from an increased outlay for rail tracks and wagon purchases. Incidentally, these stocks had risen by 10-50 per cent in the past few weeks.

Railway-related stocks such as Titagarh Wagons, Kalindee Rail Nirman, Texmaco, BEML, Kernex Microsystems and Hind Rectifiers fell by around 1-5 per cent. Only Container Corporation and Stone India saw significant gains of over 4 per cent.

"Even though some of these companies would benefit because of purchase of wagons and increased outlay for rail tracks, their stocks were fully priced on this news," said Kashmira Mehta, an institutional dealer at Mumbai-based brokerage CD EquiSearch.

However, the Bombay Stock Exchange's Sensex closed in the green.

TAKING STOCK
Company	Share price on BSE in Rs		% Change
	July 2	July 3
Titagarh Wagons	439.30	417.35	-5.00
Kalindee Rail Nirman	223.55	212.40	-4.99
Texmaco	120.45	114.45	-4.98
BEML	1081.75	1033.00	-4.51
BHEL	2149.90	2182.05	1.50
Container Corp	971.45	1010.35	4.00
Stone India	44.95	47.15	4.89

Yesterday, the US market had closed in the red after the US jobless data showed the unemployment rate at a 26-year high. Both the Dow Jones and the Nasdaq plummeted over 2.5 per cent. As a result, most of the Asian markets were flat in early trades on Friday.

The Sensex spurted 254.56 points, or 1.74 per cent, to close at 14,913.05. The CNX Nifty closed at 4,424, up 1.73 per cent.

"The Railway Budget was the mood changer for the day. Markets mainly rallied following some of the positives such as the proposal for public-private participation for the development of railway infrastructure," said Deven Choksey, managing director, K R Choksey.

The market breadth was marginally positive. Out of 2,686 shares traded on BSE, 1,341 advanced (49.93 per cent), 1,263 declined (47.02 per cent) and 82 (3.05 per cent) remained unchanged.

Among the major gainers in the Sensex stocks, HDFC soared 7.74 per cent. Other gainers included Tata Steel (4.32 per cent), Mahindra & Mahindra (3.59 per cent), Reliance Infrastructure (3.17 per cent), ICICI Bank (3.05 per cent) and Jaiprakash Associates (3.03 per cent).

National Thermal Power Corporation (NTPC) rose by 2.25 per cent on Railway Minister's declaration about setting up a 1,000-MW power plant in the tribal area of Andhra Pradesh. The power major is reportedly in talks with Japan Bank for International Co-operation for a loan of $500 million for power projects.

Hero Honda fell the most at 1.08 per cent. Hindalco (0.95 per cent), Sterlite (0.74 per cent), Reliance Communications (0.24 per cent) and ITC (0.03 per cent) were the other losers.

All the sectoral indices ended in green on Friday. The Bankex (2.19 per cent), capital goods (1.90 per cent), power (1.84 per cent), healthcare (1.80 per cent) and realty (1.18 per cent) were the prominent movers on BSE.

According to provisional BSE data, foreign institutional investors were net buyers of shares worth Rs 210.82 crore and domestic institutional investors were net buyers of Rs 298.58 crore on Friday.

Related stories