The Sensex continues to hit several all-time highs in July as the best-performing market in Asia, but the broader market is going the other way.
Nearly a third of companies with a minimum market capitalisation of `1,000 crore have hit their 52-week lows in July.
From the Nifty pack alone, 11 companies, including Bajaj Auto, Bharti Airtel, Hero MotoCorp, Tata Motors and Tata Steel witnessed their shares hitting 52-week lows during the month.
On Thursday, shares of Bajaj Auto slid another 0.74% to close the session at `2,619.25, marking the stock’s fifth consecutive day of loss, which also saw it dropping to its lowest level in one-and-a-half years.
The stock remains under pressure and has lost close to 16% of its value in the last five sessions after analysts expressed concerns on its strategy to gain a more significant share in the low-cost two-wheeler market.
What’s more, over 70% of all stocks with a market capitalisation of `1,000 crore and above are trading at below their 200-day moving averages. Moreover, nearly a third of the of these 776 stocks have lost more than a quarter of their value so far in 2018.
At 36,984.64, the benchmark index has given a return of a mere 1% in dollar terms since January, while the S&P 500 has risen by 6.5% over the same period. While the Sensex has gained close to 9% in rupee terms, this is thanks to the outperformance of just a handful of stocks. The broader market has under-performed, with the BSE Midcap index losing nearly 12% and the BSE Smallcap index giving up 15.2% between January and now.
While more than 50% of the listed public-sector companies hit their 52-week lows in July, four companies each from the private conglomerates — the Tata Group, the KM Birla Group and the Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group (ADAG) — also saw their stocks hitting their lowest levels in the last one year.
Shares of Tata Motors hit their 52-week low of `247.55 on July 18, followed by Tata Steel plunging to a similar low and hitting Rs 493.5 on BSE the following day.
While state-owned lenders such as Bank of India and Union Bank of India have declined 43.7% and 41.1% since the beginning of 2018, Canara Bank saw its shares coming off by 22.7%.
Other public-sector companies, such as HPCL, MRPL, NBCC, Engineers India, Bharat Electronics and BEML also declined in the range of 33% to 50.9% during the same period.
Both the Sensex and Nifty50 closed at record highs of 36,984.64 and 11,167.30 respectively on Thursday.
