A volatile day of trading

Thu, 15 May Closing

   Previous Close   

   Pre-Open   

   09:30 am   

   11:30 am   

   01:30 pm   

Indian equity markets had a volatile trading session today. While the indices began the day's proceedings on a firm note, they quickly pared the gains and slipped into red thereafter. Markets hovered around the dotted line for most part of the day before recovering and climbing into green in the final hour of trade. While the BSE Sensex today closed higher by 91 points, the NSE-Nifty closed higher by 15 points. Smallcaps and midcap witnessed some weakness today. The BSE Mid Cap and BSE Small Cap indices closed lower by 0.83% and 0.86% respectively. Barring stocks from consumer durables, metal and oil and gas sectors, all the sectoral indices closed in red.

As regards global markets, Asian indices closed mixed today while European indices have opened weak. The rupee was trading at Rs 59.30 to the dollar at the time of writing.

Stocks of steel companies ended the day on a weak note with Tata Sponge and Adhunik Metaliks being the key losers. Tata Steel announced the fourth quarter results of financial year 2013-2014 (4QFY14) recently. On a consolidated basis, the company's revenues grew by 22.4% YoY. Large part of Tata steel's business comes from India and European geographies. The company reported good growth in the domestic business while the European business displayed a meek performance. The company reported a volume growth of 20% YoY. Consolidated operating profits increased 14.7% YoY, on the back of a healthy top line growth. However, margins declined to 11.8% in 4QFY14 as compared to 12.6% in 4QFY13. The company reported a profit of Rs 10.3 bn as compared to a loss of Rs 65.2 bn in same quarter last year. Tata steel closed up by 1.91% today.

The government today released the Wholesale price inflation (WPI) data for the month of April 2014. As per the data released, inflation stood at 5.2%. As per various sources, this fall was largely attributable to a drop food prices. Overall, the food segment eased to 8.64% during the month, from a high of 9.9% in March 2014. Further, the rate of price rise in the fuel and power segment was 8.93%, vs 11.22 % during March. In contrast to this, the recently released consumer price inflation data was at 3-month high at 5.59%.

The next monetary policy announcement will take place in first week of June 2014. It would be interesting to see what RBI's reaction to this inflation data is and what stance it takes towards the key rates. Do you expect revision in the key rates in the upcoming monetary policy? Share your views on the Equitymaster Club.