Sensex, Nifty still in red; oil & gas, pharma stocks drag

Moneycontrol Bureau

1:50 pm Results: Maruti beat street expectations with the fourth quarter profit rising a whopping 60.5 percent, supported by higher volumes and favorable foreign exchange. The profit increased to Rs 1,284 crore from Rs 800 crore in the year-ago period. "Higher volumes, material cost reduction initiatives, favorable foreign exchange and lower sales promotion expenses contributed to the bottomline during the quarter," said the company in its filing to the exchange. Revenues increased by 12.6 percent to Rs 13,625 crore in the quarter ended March 2015 from Rs 12,101.4 crore in the same quarter last year.

1:30 pm Market outlook: Jai Bala of 1857 Advisors said that while the market was due for a bounceback in the immediate term as it was "oversold", he recalled his conversation on March 4 and March 20 when he had said the current correction would "longer and deeper" than the ones in the past.

"At the moment, the structure remains the same," he said. He did not lay much importance to levels such as the 200 DMA, but he marked out 17,700 on the Bank Nifty and 8,125 on the Nifty as levels where one could "start to fish". "But if they break, the Nifty could come down to 7,900."

At a fundamental level, even as many individual stocks have corrected 25-30 percent, there should be no urgency to buy stocks, according to veteran broker Dipan Mehta.

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The market is still in the red dragged by oil and pharma stocks. The Sensex down 130.45 points at 27307.49. The Nifty is down 49.25 points or 0.6 percent at 8256.00. About 585 shares have advanced, 1891 shares declined, and 136 shares are unchanged.

HDFC, Dr Reddy's Labs, SBI, HUL and Hero Motocorp are losers while Vedanta, Axis Bank, Tata Power and NTPC are top gainers in the Sensex.

Brent crude prices held near a 4-4.5 month high above USD 65 a barrel, supported by concerns over fighting in Yemen disrupting Middle East supplies and signs that US shale output may have started to decline.

The number of active US rigs drilling for oil has fallen for a record 20 weeks in a row to the lowest since 2010, according to Baker Hughes data, fuelling expectations of a drop in US production.