Nifty highly overbought but may log in more gains

In Friday’s closing report, we had mentioned that the benchmarks are still possibly gathering energy for a short upmove. On Monday the Indian market had an upbeat opening, which was also the day’s low. The market continued to move in the narrow range upto 1.30pm after which it witnessed a sudden upsurge that made the indices hit a new all-time high. For BSE 30-share Sensex this was the fifth time in this month, while for NSE 50-share Nifty it was the fourth time.
 

The Sensex opened at 21,828 while Nifty opened at 6,511. The Sensex hit an all time high at 22,074 while the Nifty hit an all time at 6,592. Both the benchmark closed almost at their respective intra-day high. Sensex closed at 22,055 (up 300 points or 1.38%) while the Nifty closed at 6,584 (up 89 points or 1.36%). The NSE recorded a lower volume of 59.45 crore shares.
 

Except for Pharma (0.61%) and IT (0.14%) all the other indices on the NSE closed in the green. The top five gainers were CPSE (3.57%), Bank Nifty (2.75%), PSE (2.51%), Finance (2.50%) and Energy (2.21%).
 

Of the 50 stocks on the Nifty, 41 ended in the green. The top five gainers were Gail (5.29%), ONGC (4.37%), IndusInd Bank (4.20%), Kotak Bank (3.86%) and ICICI Bank (3.57%). The top five losers were HCL Technologies (1.81%), Dr Reddy’s (1.30%), Wipro (1.16%), Cipla (1.03%) and Infosys (0.62%).
 

Of the 1,550 companies on the NSE, 702 companies closed in the green, 758 closed in the red while 90 closed flat.
 

GAIL the top gainer in the pack of Sensex 30 stocks, today announced that during the Gastech Conference being held in Seoul, South Korea had signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Chubu Electric Power Co., Inc., Japan (Chubu) on Friday. GAIL (up 4.81%) closed at Rs370.35 on the BSE.
 

Engineers India (EIL) was the top gainer in the ‘A’ group on the BSE was in news over winning a contract in the $3.6 billion Oman plastics project. EIL has won the PMC (project management consultancy) contract for Orpic's Liwa Plastics Project at Sohar in Oman against international competitive bidding. The contract is valued at over $40 million and signifies the company's steady headway overseas. Engineers India (up 6.73%) closed at Rs199.95 on the BSE.
 

The top loser among the ‘A’ group on the BSE, Financial Technologies, was in the news as the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) removed its "fit and proper" label last week and ordered it to sell its entire stake in the country's third-largest stock exchange. The stock fell 3.98% to close at Rs358.35 on the BSE.
 

US indices closed in the negative on Friday. The Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) next undertakes monetary policy review at a two-day meeting on 29-30 April 2014.

Except for NZSE 50 (down 0.12%) all the other Asian indices closed in the green. Hang Seng (1.91%) was the top gainer.
 

A preliminary gauge of China's factory activity fell to an eight-month low. The "flash" edition of HSBC's China manufacturing Purchasing Managers' Index (PMI) dropped to 48.1 from February's 48.5, remaining below the 50 level separating expansion from contraction. However, the Asian markets went up on the hope that this would attract government stimulus.
 

European indices were trading in the red, while US indices were trading marginally higher.