While the market may go up in the first half of the week, rallies are likely to be met with selling

The Indian market closed the week with a loss of nearly 2% mainly on global concerns as investors the world over were worried about the US Federal Reserve tapering its bond buying initiative following signs of an uptick in the world’s largest economy. The falling rupee, which is seen as one of the reasons for foreign investors pulling out funds from domestic equities, was also another factor that led to the decline in the market this week. Local investors will focus on key economic indicators like industrial output, CPI inflation and WPI inflation in the coming week.

The Sensex dropped 331 points (1.68%) to 19,429 and the Nifty ended the week at 5,881, a decline of 105 points (1.75%). The benchmarks settled in the red on four out of the five trading days in the week, with a positive close on Wednesday. While the market may go up in the first half of the week, rallies are likely to be met with selling.

A sell-off in oil & gas, power and consumer durables stocks and weak global cues led the market down on Monday. Pressure from consumer durables, banking and realty stocks saw the market paring its early gains and settling lower on Tuesday. The market indices closed marginally higher on Wednesday on buying in select blue chip stocks.

Concerns of a weakening rupee led the market lower on Thursday. The market pared its gains in late trade on selling pressure from rate-sensitive sectors and ended in the negative on Friday.

BSE IT and BSE TECk (up 1% each) were the top gainers in the sectoral space. The main losers were BSE Consumer Durables (down 4%) and BSE Auto (down 2%).

Major Sensex gainers in the week were Dr Reddy’s Laboratories (up 5%), Wipro (up 3%), Infosys, TCS (up 2% each) and Larsen & Toubro (up 1%). HDFC (down 6%), BHEL, Hero MotoCorp, Sterlite Industries (down 5% each) and Bajaj Auto (down 4%) were the main losers on the index.

The Nifty was led by Dr Reddy’s (up 5%), Reliance Infrastructure (up 4%), Lupin (up 3%), DLF and IDFC (up 2% each). The key losers in the week were Asian Paints, Sesa Goa, HDFC, Ambuja Cements and BHEL (down 6% each).

The HSBC India manufacturing PMI moderated to 50.1 in May from 51 in April. Though the May reading was the lowest since March 2009, the overall index has held above the 50 level that divides growth from contraction.

The HSBC/Markit purchasing managers’ index for the services industry inched up to 53.6 in May, signalling a solid expansion in output, one that was the fastest in three months. The index had registered 50.7 in April. The services sector expanded largely driven by higher levels of new work placed at private sector firms in India, the HSBC survey said.

The Cabinet on Tuesday approved a bill for setting up a regulator for the real estate sector. The proposed bill seeks to provide a uniform regulatory environment to the sector. It also intends to make it mandatory for developers to launch projects only after acquiring all statutory clearances from relevant authorities.

In corporate news, Reliance Industries (RIL) on Thursday announced an investment of Rs1.5 lakh crore in core business of petrochemicals and oil and gas as well as in retail and telecom sectors in the next three years.

The very next day RIL chairman and managing director Mukesh Ambani announced a Rs12,000 crore deal with his younger sibling’s Reliance Communications for sharing the latter’s telecom towers across the country. As per the agreement, RJio would utilise up to 45,000 ground and rooftop based towers across RCom's nationwide network for accelerated rollout of its state-of-the-art 4G wireless broadband services.

In international news, the Labor Department data showed US employers added 175,000 jobs in May. But unemployment ticked up by one tenth of a percentage point to 7.6% and April’s job-growth figure was revised downward. While investors agree the Fed will have to pull out its supportive measures eventually, the timing and process the central bank uses has become a central concern for money managers across the world.