Markets End On a Negative Note

The markets ended with marginal losses after languishing in the negative zone for the better part of the day. The Sensex after starting the day in the green soon slipped into the red on weakness in select auto and metal stocks. The index touched a low of 18,513 in the first hour of trade. Thereafter, the index moved sideways and finally ended at 18,562 - down 56 points while the Nifty ended at 5581 down by 19 points. Weak cues from overseas dampened the sentiments. European bourses continued to show weakness ahead of the release of European bank stress tests results. CAC and DAX were trading 0.5% lower while markets in Switzerland and Stockholm declined 1%, each. In Asia, however, Nikkei was up 0.4%. Taiwan jumped 1% to 8,574. However, TCS bucked the trend and ended with a 2% gain after posting Q1 results. The company reported a net profit of Rs 2,380 crore, up 28% from Rs 1,863 crore in Q1FY11. The company's revenues increased 31% at Rs 10,797 crore for the quarter. Among other IT stocks - HCL Tech and Wipro advanced while Infosys once again ended in red, the stock was down 8% for the week. In other news, the MET department has said that the key monsoon rains were 19% below normal a week ago improving from a quarter below average rains in the previous week. Oil marketing companies (OMCs) and aviation shares moved up on the back of a fall in crude prices. Crude was down 2.5% in New York on Thursday. HPCL gained 1.3% while BPCL moved up 0.5%. Jet Airways, in the aviation space, added 3.5% to Rs 506. The BSE market breadth was marginally negative. Out of 2,991 stocks traded, 1,469 declined while 1,385 advanced in trades.