TCS shines in lacklustre markets

Markets ended with marginal losses after languishing in the negative zone for the better part of the day.

The Sensex after moving in the green in the early session, slipped into the red on weakness in 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.

Weak cues from overseas markets dampened sentiments.

European bourses continued to show weakness ahead of the release of European bank stress tests results.

CAC and DAX are trading 0.5% down each while markets in Switzerland and Stockholm declined 1%, each. In Asia, however, Nikkei was up 0.4%. Taiwan Weigted jumped 1% to 8,574.

"Market after 3week of rally one week of profit booking is always possible. But with many Global development, low volume and few disappointing result market is lacking trend.

But we are very focussed we are stock specific which has paid good result," said A K Prabhakar, Senior Vice President Equity Research, Anand Rathi.

All the sectoral indices, barring IT, ended in the red. BSE auto index was down 0.5% dragged by auto major, Bajaj Auto.

The stock fell 1% to Rs 1,419 after reporting lowest y-o-y net profit growth in the last nine quarters for the first quarter ended June 2011.

Net profit for the company grew 21% to Rs 711 crore for Q1FY12. Tata Motors and Hero Honda, among other auto stocks, were down 1-2% each.

Metal index slipped nearly 1%, mirroring movement in the London Metal Exchange.

Shares in the sector had gone up recently after China announced strong macroeconomic data.

Sea Goa, Sterlite, Welcorp, Nalco, Hindalco and Tata Steel were the big losers in the index.

However, TCS led with 2% gains 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 continued to slip post Q1 results.

Earlier in the day, freak trades were noticed in select large-cap names like Reliance, Infosys, SBI and TCS.

End of the day, BSE announced that it would be cancelling all pending orders from the pre-market session.

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.

India's services exports stood at $11.83 billion in May, 2011, up almost 3.2% in comparison to April.

The country's total receipts from services exported stood at $11.46 billion in April, 2011, the Reserve Bank said in a statement.

FMCG stocks fell on profit booking.

Cement shares were down. HUL was down 0.8% at Rs 330. ITC declined marginally to Rs 201.

Oil marketing companies 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.

BSE market breadth was marginally negative. Out of 2,991 stocks traded, 1,469 declined while 1,385 advanced in trades.