Sanguinity On The Horizon Again

Domestic bourses gained momentum yesterday despite the US markets being closed. The surge is welcome, for the meltdown of the recent past could have had serious repurcussions had it continued.

There is a fresh air of optimism and the same should be welcome news for the aggressive players of the New Economy.

If the current rally persists, then corporates that had put on hold their American depositary receipts could get a fresh lease of life. To add to the feel-good factor, no major disappointments were seen on the results front. In fact, most of the majors have declared healthy growth figures.

 

However, we could be in for a more circumspect rally this time round.

Back again Reliance

With the company set to announce its results in the not so distant future, the action at the Reliance counter is gathering a momentum of its own. It has, in fact, held its own during the recent phase of volatility. This has helped the scrip to again find a place of prominence in the portfolio of a few leading fund managers.

The price run at this counter continued on the last day of the National Stock Exchange settlement also, indicating a large amount of delivery-based purchases. The FII broking houses who have been active on the buy side are Uncle Jam and the PN brokerage.

While Uncle Jam has bought a million and a half shares of Reliance, PN has accumulated two million shares of Reliance during the just concluded settlement.

With the company having big plans for the convergent economy, the company's forthcoming annual general meetingwould be eagerly awaited.

Favour(IT)es

While the prophets of doom continue with their rationale for a further meltdown, institutional buying in quality IT stocks have re-emerged.

The SSI scrip, which had caught the fancy of the Emerging Operator earlier on in the month, attracted a fair degree of institutional buying yesterday. After a brief hibernation during the heat of the summer, the Araby Fund has again emerged as a buyer on the local bourses. The fund has accumulated a lakh shares of SSI.

Having been a fence sitter for a long time, Mr Exit is also showing signs of a change of heart. Mr Exit is believed to have accumulated a lakh shares of SSI after getting convinced that the scrip is available at a reasonable valuation.

Another scrip which attracted Mr Exit after a lot of convincing was Satyam. Here too, the buying was restricted to a lakh shares. The spate of buying has emerged after a lot of brainstorming and hence the latest spate is being restricted to top-line companies. A reflection of this thinking was the Dutch Brokerage's buy of half a lakh shares in Wipro.

ITC re-emerges

ITC which has always been a punter's delight due to its low floating stock, is again coming into the limelight.

This time around, the rally has been sustained because of institutional activity.

The stock is attracting institutional buying primarily because the consensus is that ITC is a good defensive stock in today's volatile times. As a result funds with some of the largest exposure's on the Indian markets have emerged as buyer's in ITC.

While Mr Big restricted itself to a buy of 3,00,000 shares of ITC, Savvy was more aggressive in its execution. Savvy has accumulated half a million shares of ITC during the past two days.

Let good times roll

With the rally showing breadth and depth, the feeling on the Street is that we are in for better times.