Market Movers: Midcaps outperform; Voda Idea jumps; 180 stocks test 52-week highs

Mumbai: Benchmark equity indices erased all early losses on Friday and eked out a small rise, helped by gains in select blue chips. Analysts said the uptrend can continue, backed by strong interest from foreign funds.

Sensex closed 15 points higher at 38,041, while peer Nifty edged up 14 points to 11,214.

“The market is expected to continue the momentum in spite all adversities. Investors are advised to remain cautiously bullish around these times, especially when massive amounts are being raised from secondary markets,” said Jimeet Modi, Founder & CEO of Samco Group,

Here is a lowdown of what happened in Friday’s trade:
Mindspace REIT rocks on debut
Mindspace Business Parks REIT, the second in the space so far, made a decent stock market debut on Friday, as the scrip got listed at Rs 304 on BSE, a 10.55 per cent premium over its issue price of Rs 275. It closed at Rs 303.87. Owned by K Raheja group and Blackstone, the company's initial public offering (IPO) to raise up to Rs 4,500 crore was subscribed 13 times.

Broader markets outperform
While the benchmark indices closed with small gains, the broader market outperformed, with BSE Midcap and Smallcap indices rising 1.44 per cent and 0.78 per cent, respectively. BSE500 index rose 0.31 per cent.

Vodafone Idea jumps
Telecom major Vodafone Idea erased early losses and jumped 7.03 per cent to Rs 8.83 despite the company’s net worth turning negative at the end of June, hurt by provisions for statutory dues and mounting losses.

Profit booking drags IT
BSE IT index was one of the key sectoral losers dropped 1.15 per cent, as traders locked in gains after the recent rally in the pack. The index is up 66 per cent so far from its March lows. Leading IT names like TCS and Infosys dropped 0.51 per cent and 1.90 per cent, respectively. Peer HCL Technologies declined 2.22 per cent and Wipro 0.79 per cent.

Stocks that hit 52-week highs
A total of 189 stocks hit 52-week highs on the BSE. These included Aarti Drugs, Ambuja Cements, Alkem Laboratories, Aurobindo Pharma, Ballarpur Industries, Cipla, Granules India, IndiaMART InterMESH, Neogen Chemicals, Navin Flourine and Sequent Scientific, among others.

Stocks that hit upper circuit limits
As many as 372 stocks rose by their daily upper limit on the BSE. These included YES Bank, Omaxe, Inox Wind, Shree Runuka Sugars, Hindustan Construction Co, Simplex Infrastructure and CG Power, among others.

What do the charts say?

The market’s positive trend is likely to continue, said analysts. “Nifty’s short-term trend is positive amid a rangebound movement. A sustainable move above 11,250 could pull Nifty towards the 11,350-11,400 range over the next week,” said Nagaraj Shetti, technical research analyst, HDFC Securities. “Immediate support to be watched is at 11,100 and an important lower support for trend reversal is placed at 10,900,” he said.