Indices may see profit-booking with eye on earnings: Analysts Stock markets could witness profit-booking and the next batch of January-March quarterly earnings will continue to influence the near-term trend on the bourses during a holiday-shortened week ahead, say experts. Stock markets will remain closed on Thursday for May Day. Foreign fund flows, global cues and rupee movement against the US dollar will also hold significance for the domestic equities. Besides, auto stocks will be in focus as companies will report sales data starting from Thursday. Among major companies announcing quarterly results this week are Hindustan Unilever, Bharti Airtel, Jindal Steel & Power and Sesa Sterlite. “This week will be crucial in terms of news flow as the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) of the US Federal Reserve undertakes monetary policy review at a two-day meeting on April 29-30. Besides, automobile companies will release their monthly figures for April 2014,” said Jayant Manglik, President Retail Distribution, Religare Securities Limited. The next batch of corporate earnings from pharma, public sector banks and capital goods sectors will be important to watch from the current levels. Over the past week, the benchmark Sensex fell by nearly 77 points to end at 22,688.07. Mutual funds release AUM disclosure from group firms; Birla MF on top In a first of its kind disclosure in the Indian MF space, all fund houses have begun disclosing investments of group companies in their AUMs (assets under management) and Birla Sun Life MF tops the list with Rs 6,585 crore from its related entities. While Reliance MF became the first fund house to make such disclosures voluntarily earlier this year, it was followed by Religare MF. However, regulator Sebi has now made it mandatory for fund houses to make such disclosures with effect from AUM for the month of March. According to disclosures made by various fund houses, Birla Sun Life MF tops the list for investments by group companies in absolute terms, followed by SBI MF (Rs 5,218 crore), ICICI Prudential MF (Rs 4,971 crore), HDFC MF (Rs 4,032 crore and Reliance MF (Rs 3,650 crore). In terms of highest AUM contribution from group distributors, SBI MF tops the list with Rs 10,136 crore, followed by HDFC MF (Rs 7,766 crore), Axis MF (Rs 6,116 crore), ICICI Prudential (Rs 5,802 crore) and Birla Sun Life (Rs 5,012 crore). Reliance MF, which is the country's third largest fund house after HDFC MF and ICICI Pru, has AUM contribution of only Rs 547 crore (0.5 per cent) from its group distributors. These disclosures are for the month of March, during which the AUM of mutual fund industry normally shrinks by about 20 per cent in the last 15 days due to redemption by corporate and bank investors. Such disclosures would be now made every month by all 44 fund houses operating in the country. As per Sebi's direction, MFs are required to make monthly disclosure of AUM from different categories of schemes, AUM from places beyond top-15 cities, contribution of sponsor and its associates in AUM and contribution from different types of investors. PTI
