Sensex slides below 19k!

Fri, 14 Jan Closing

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With the markets in the grip of final hour panic yet again, benchmark indices slid rapidly during the latter half of the session and as a consequence, ended the day deep in the red. BSE-Sensex lost in the region of around 320 points (down 1.7%) whereas decline on the Nse-Nifty stood at around 100 points. BSE Midcap and BSE Small cap indices weren't spared either with both of them going down in the region of 1% each. More than 5 stocks declined for every 1 stock that gained on the Sensex today.

While most Asian indices also closed lower today, Europe too is in the midst of a bear spell currently. The rupee was trading at Rs 45.2 to the dollar at the time of writing.

With little good news of note, either nationally or internationally, the indices came into the vice like grip of sellers during the latter half of the day today and went below the 19k mark for the first time in two months. We wouldn't be surprised if the markets linger at these levels for quite some time to come as macro headwinds continue to blow and blow pretty strong at that.

Zee Entertainment, the entertainment major came in for some heavy selling today and lost in the region of 9%. The pessimism seems to be a result of below par performance of the company in the December quarter. The company reported a decent bottomline growth of 14% YoY but the fact that it came on the back of a very strong 84% topline growth seemed to have disappointed investors. The reason the topline growth was not able to cascade down to the bottomline was the poor operating performance, where margins tanked more than 11% and expenses went up to the tune of 125% YoY. It should be noted though that the results are not exactly comparable as the results for current quarter also include financials of some recently merged firms. For the nine month period, company's bottomline growth came in at 53% YoY on the back of an 84% growth in topline.

Tata Motors, the CV major, was another counter that came in for a bit of a pounding today as it fell more than 4%. Apparently, investors weren't too enthused with the December sales numbers for its overseas subsidiary Jaguar Land Rover. As per reports, the subsidiary growth came in virtually flat for the month of December. However, CV and passenger vehicles sales have come in strong with impressive double digit growth rates. For the first nine month period, global sales on a cumulative basis have grown 29% YoY. While the growth is impressive, there is no way it is going to be sustainable and should come down in the forthcoming quarters.