The Hindu Business Line : Techs turn weak

THANKS to the easing of pressure on the oil front, the US and Indian markets ended in a positive note. Apart from oil prices and a pair of reports indicating that the US economy has not decelerated as much as some expected seemed to have kept the indices on the plus side.

In fact, the Standard & Poor's 500 Index rose for a third consecutive week amid the slowest trading of the year. For the week, the S&P 500 rose 0.9 per cent to 1107.77, the Dow Jones Industrial Average added 0.8 per cent to 10,195.01 and the tech-focussed Nasdaq Composite Index climbed 1.3 per cent to 1862.09.

The passing of the Finance Bill in Parliament and the slight weakness in inflation rates helped the Indian stocks recover. Both the BSE's Sensex and the NSE's S&P CNX Nifty gained ove 1.03 per cent during last week.

It was a mixed show by the Indian ADRs; while tech counters suffered after gaining initially, ICICI Bank, HDFC Bank and Dr. Reddy closed on a firm note. Joining the winners list were Rediff.com and Sify. The former has been witnessing an uptrend ever since it announced its Q1 financial performance on August 19. Its revenues increased 24 per cent to $2.6 million while the net loss came down to $506,000 ($2 million).

Dr Reddy's Laboratories, which has been witnessing selling pressure on worries over its profits, recovered to end firm at $15.62 against the previous week close of $15.46. This was despite the fact that Israel's Teva Pharmaceutical Industries had lost a bid to start selling a generic version of GlaxoSmithKline Plc's anti-nausea drug Zofran, for which Dr Reddy's has also filed for approval in the US.

The infotech ADRs could not maintain the momentum as they succumbed to profit booking. Infosys touched its 52-week high $52.22 last Wednesday but closed weaker at $50.54 ($49.36). Wipro closed at $16.69 ($17) and Satyam Computer at $19.79 ($20.29).

Wipro Technologies announced that its global IT services division has entered into an agreement with Dassault Systems for product lifecycle management process with Dassault Systemes' CAA V5 PLMware.

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