Markets at a glance

Encouraging advance tax figures and S&P’s upgrade of India’s ratings outlook triggered renewed buying interest in Indian stocks. The key benchmark indices surged to 2-month highs with renewed buying from foreign investors.

The BSE Sensex notched up gains of 412 points or 2.4 per cent to 17,578 during the week, while Nifty rose 126 points or 2.4 per cent to 5,263. Midcaps and smallcaps underperformed broader indices. The BSE Mid-Cap index and BSE Small-Cap index rose 0.94 per cent and 0.74 per cent, respectively. Food price index rose 16.3 per cent in the year to March 6, 2010, which was lower than an annual rise of 17.8 per cent in the previous week.

Markets this week

RBI increased repo and reverse repo rates by 25 basis points each after the market hours on Friday and this will have an impact on stocks when trading resumes today. Though negative, many marketmen feel the trend is positive and said that RBI’s move was not totally unexpected. However, volatility could be the order of the day in the truncated week on account of Ram Navami on Wednesday. The March series expiry this week could also add to volatility. At the same time, global markets still continue to remain crucial. FII buying that totalled Rs 14,700 crore in the calendar year, would also have bearing on market direction.

 

Stock to watch
Bharti Airtel
Last week's close (Rs) 311.88 
Prev. week's close (Rs) 299.08 
Week's high (Rs) 312.87 
Week's low (Rs) 291.25 
Last week's ave. daily turnover (Rs cr) 161.08 
Prev. week's ave. daily turnover (Rs cr) 157.32 
Number of up/down move 4/1

The Bharti stock could come into play when the stock opens for trading today following the board approval for the $9 billion offer for Zain Africa.

Exclusive talks between Bharti and Zain are slated to finish on March 25, enabling Bharti to acquire an African player after a failed bid to capture MTN. The potential buy could help spread its wings into the fast growing emerging markets as call charges observed a major slide in the domestic markets, recently.

Reports indicate that Bharti could put part of the proceeds in an escrow account and the company might also ask Zain for legal protection on the Nigerian asset. At Rs 311.85, the stock trades at 12.6 times its trailing 12-month EPS of Rs 12.7.