Laggard sectors entertainment, hospitality show signs of life in the stock markets

Mumbai: Unlock themes and undervalued stocks are emerging as big gainers in the broader market rally while the super largecap stocks constituting the benchmark indices are showing signs of slowing down after touching five-month highs during the last one month.

Unlock theme gainers on Thursday included stocks from tourism and hospitality, entertainment, aviation, consumer retail and power utilities, among others.

The big gainers were Indian Hotels, EIH Hotel, Interglobe Aviation, Spicejet, Future Retail, Avenue Supermarts, Shoppers Stop, Jubilant Foodworks, GMR Infra, Inox Leisure, NTPC, Tata Power.

Some midcap stocks are also seeing value buying after languishing for some time as their business prospects are improving. These include NHPC (12.17 per cent), auto parts maker Varroc Engineering (17.75 per cent), water treatment specialist Va Tech Wabag (15.90 per cent) and Ashok Leyland (2.89 per cent).

“We have seen some robust moves in a bundle of mid- and smallcap stocks, which had clearly been missing for more than a year before COVID. So practically, they are compensating for their long underperformance,” said Sameet Chavan, analyst for Angel Broking.

The Nifty Midcap 50 index has moved up 9.73 per cent in the last one-month period where as the Nifty Midcap 100 has moved up by 9.53 per cent during the same period.

Nifty 50 index has however moved only 3.80 per cent during the same period indicating their valuations are getting stretched.

On Thursday tracking weak global cues Nifty 50 index fell 0.84 per cent or 96.20 points to close at 11,312.20 while the Sensex fell 1.02 per cent or 394.40 points at 38,220.39.

But Nifty Midcap-50 index gained 0.92 per cent and BSE Midcap index gained 0.87 per cent.

"Global stock markets were knocked on Thursday after the US Federal Reserve signalled it was not immediately prepared to deploy further unconventional measures to shore up the world’s biggest economy," said Deepak Jasani, head of retail research, HDFC Securities.