STOCK BUZZ

State Bank of India, or SBI, is concerned about the bank's asset quality, reports CNBC-TV18, quoting Newswire18. "There is no concentration of risk on the bank's books."   SBI said it is not shying from lending, but wants proper risk assessment. It needs long-term funds to lend to infrastructure.   The bank said it plans to list SBI Life in 18-24 months, and will sell 5-10% of the same. "Shareholder bonus is not an issue, and the bank will do so if permitted."   SBI said it will decide on further mergers and acquisitions once the merger with State Bank of Saurashtra is completed.   The public sector bank said it sees more bad loans from small and medium enterprises.   Meanwhile, Reserve Bank of India or RBI said the banks' safety and health is of utmost importance. Its risk-weight cuts will release 70 bps capital to SBI

Reliance Industries had touched an intraday high of Rs 1,188.80 and an intraday low of Rs 1,121. At 1:03 pm, the share was quoting at Rs 1,128, down Rs 16.8, or 1.47%.   It was trading with volumes of 3,581,379 shares. Yesterday the share closed up 1.82% or Rs 20.45 at Rs 1,144.80. Share Price Movement During The Last 12 Months Period Price Latest Price Gain/Loss (Rs.) % Gain/Loss 3-Days 1056.05 1128.00 71.95 6.81 5-Days 1139.95 1128.00 -11.95 -1.05 7-Days 1141.40 1128.00 -13.40 -1.17 15-Days 1303.10 1128.00 -175.10 -13.44 1-Month 1019.50 1128.00 108.50 10.64 3-Month 2232.00 1128.00 -1,104.00 -49.46 6-Month 2515.60 1128.00 -1,387.60 -55.16 9-Month 2551.45 1128.00 -1,423.45 -55.79 1-Year 2884.55 1128.00 -1,756.55 -60.90                  

    Comments from Dalal :   IDFC has some more perhaps time and gestation, consolidation which will continue for four-six months. But if one had to take financial services surrogate for India in terms of its representation both in the capital market and in the infrastructure space, IDFC makes a good investment. It's expensive right now because it's still an Rs 10,000 crore marketcap. I would wait for it to correct a little but I was to take a two year investment horizon, I think these are very good levels to start looking at IDFC

Deepak Parekh, Chairman, HDFC, said there is n o change in Citi's holding in HDFC. He spoke to CEO Vikram Pandit recently and learnt that Citi is not selling HDFC shares.     However, five to six investors have approached him, wanting to buy Citi's stake in HDFC, Parekh added.   Yesterday, the US government moved to guarantee USD 300 billion in troubled Citi's assets and announced that it will inject an additional USD 20 billion. Global markets rallied after the US government announced the bailout package.   Citigroup has a 11.74% stake in HDFC, making it the single largest shareholder in the housing finance company.

It was a bad day but not a disastrous day under the circumstances one would have to say because the way we opened up this morning after that massive fall in the Dow and the S&P – it really could have gone anyway. Like many Asian markets, we could have closed 5-6% lower. But we closed only about 3% lower – say about 250-points odd, just under that 8,500 for the Sensex. The Nifty came off the lows of the day – flirted with 2,500 for quite a bit and then closed the day around that 2,550 mark. There was a little bit of a pullback towards the end but it was still down about 70-80 points on the Nifty.   The volumes were extremely low, so don't know how much you can take away from a day like this – the pullback towards the end or the fact that it did not close with 5-6% kind of cuts but many largecap names like ICICI Bank, even Reliance Industries, many of the telecom stocks out there did not look good.   Technology had another difficult day and of course real estate continue...

From Rediff : The only way that Pandit can get Citibank back on track is by biting the bullet. Pandit's five-pronged strategy is already making itself felt, with harsh impact on certain quarters. The Indian-born Citigroup boss plans to cut costs by almost 20 per cent, sacking more than 50,000 employees or 20 per cent of the bank's staff, jettisoning risky assets, selling non-essentials, and raising interest rates for credit card customers. The bank is also going slow on lending, with its global loans portfolio having shrunk by over 15 per cent. The other worry for Citi is that while it grapples to come out of the economic quagmire that it finds itself in, its rivals like JP Morgan and Bank of America are racing ahead at impressive speeds. JP Morgan turned in a net income of $8 billion and its commercial loans portfolio grew by 18 per cent during the period that Citi was absorbing crippling losses. Bank of America had a net income of $6 billion and its loans portfolio rose by ...

Market Prediction : Market seems to be indecisive and shows trend of moving towards green patch with great caution. I would suggest to wait for couple days more before making any long term investment. For Daily Traders I would suggest to Buy Reliance , TCS at current price with Stop loss. These 2 bigges will surely move up 40 to 60 Points before lunch time. Make sure to use Stop Loss.