Dreary Drill

A sombre mood prevailed on the bourses on Monday despite foreign investors adding some zing through sporadic buys. However, trading was stock-specific with no discernable trend. The avowed concern by the government over the slowdown has already been discounted by the market players as a mere posturing by the politicians.

Dr Reddy's

Dr Reddy's Laboratories came off the highs it had experienced last week and straightaway lost 5 per cent on intense profit-booking. Marketmen said that there appeared to be no apparent reason behind the sales other than profit-booking. Dr Reddy's gained appreciably in the last two weeks in tandem with other pharma stocks as the market, gave up its focus on tech and other stocks. Marketmen, however, said that it was a mere technical correction and pharma would remain the flavour of the market for some time yet.

K-10

Is the One Man Army back? All his favourite stocks are going up. While Aftek Infosys gained more than 10 per cent, Global Tele was up 8 per cent on Monday's trading. Some of his other favourite counters were also trading in the positive territory such as Himachal, DSQ Software and Silverline marketmen said. Lupin, another of the One Man Army's favourite was back in circulation as trading in the stock - after the merger with Lupin Chemicals, commenced. A lesser favourite stock Mascot System was also in the limelight on Monday.

HFCL

Himachal Futuristic could see some upside now with Cap-it-all letting up the relentless selling pressure on the scrip. Of course, the stock has been helped by the fact that HFCL has bagged a large part of the Rs 550 crore order from BSNL. Even otherwise, analysts are of the opinion that the decline has troughed out and the upsides are more than the downsides. "Though we do not see any major growth this year, still the decline has been arrested," they said. The company is expected to ride out the current business slump and emerge relatively unscathed, was the verdict among knowledgeable circles.