Banking & realty out of favour today

Tue, 17 Dec 01:30 pm

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Indian share markets pared gains but continued to trade well above the dotted line in the post-noon trading session. Majority of the sectoral indices are trading in the green with pharma, IT and FMCG stocks being the biggest gainers. Banking & realty are the only stocks trading in the red.

BSE-Sensex is up 51 points and NSE-Nifty is trading 14 points up. BSE Mid Cap is trading up 0.5% and BSE Small Cap index is trading up 0.4%. The rupee is trading at 61.9 to the US dollar.

Majority of the consumer product stocks are trading in the green with Pidilite Industries and Jyothy Consumer being among the major gainers whereas Hindustan Unilever and Marico are among the few stocks trading in the red.  As per a leading financial daily, Hindustan Unilever's Axe brand in the deodorant space has been overtaken by a relatively new player Fogg owned by homegrown company, Vini Cosmetics. As per Nielsen's data for October, Fogg has grabbed a market share of 13% whereas Axe, which is an established global brand of Unilever and hitherto the leader, has a market share of 8%. Reportedly, Axe commanded a market share of 18%-19% in the year-ago period. Fogg is owned and marketed by Darshan Patel, the former promoter of Paras Parmaceuticals that was later acquired by Reckitt Benckizer. The FMCG division of Paras Pharma was acquired by Marico last year. Vini Cosmetics wants to increase distribution reach of its products that also include other personal care products such as White Tone face powder, Glam up instant glow cream and Jinjola prickly heat powder.

Software company stocks, are trading mixed with Tata Consultancy services (TCS) and NIIT leading among gainers, while Oracle Financial Services and HCL are among the leading losers. As per a financial daily, TCS  expects FY 2015, to be even better than FY14 on back of uptick in client spending in the US and Europe and growth in demand for technologies like cloud, mobility and Big Data. The company is witnessing increase in momentum in social, mobile, analytics and cloud (SMAC) technologies, which offer a "multi-billion dollar opportunity" in revenues for the company in the next 3-5 years. Reportedly, TCS CEO and Managing Director N Chandrasekaran said, SMAC technologies are driving enormous opportunities across sectors and the firm is poised to leverage the opportunities on the back of enormous investments it has made on them. Further he also added that optimism in outsourcing demand and increasing confidence among clients is driving hopes for a better year.