ICICI BANK

Not everything in a bear market needs to be a bad thing. For some it’s an excellent opportunity to enter the stock markets especially those who have seen the Sensex scale the heights that it had during the last few years and had desperately wished to be a part of. Theindiastreet.com presents a list of 10 companies across different sectors you might be interested in if you want to invest in the Indian stock market.

State Bank Of India is India’s largest Bank. Just on its heel is ICICI Bank, India's second largest Bank. Recently, there has been a lot of rumor about ICICI Bank suffering due to its severe losses. In the past one year thanks to the after effects of sub prime effect and loss faced by their Derivatives department, ICICI Bank has been the talk of the town. The fact that they curtailed bonus this year and freezed recruitment, added fuel to the fire.ICICI Bank has declared that they are extremely healthy and have adequate capital This was declared by their  chief executive on Friday in order  try to allay fears about the bank's exposure to the global credit turmoil. ICICI Bank Has gone one step further and had made a  public disclosure of its exposure and has also analyzed the impact of this exposure on its Balance Sheet. Mr K V Kamath, has declared that the exposure is minimal and its impact on profit and balance sheets, is negligible.

The current period is an ideal situation for stock picking especially if you’re interested in investing with a long term view. The markets are in a state where their movements are ‘predicted’ or speculated upon by those who want to make money without investing too much. This has resulted in the market being largely bearish. Such a situation may interest one to invest in the banking sector.

The Indian economy has been exhibiting strong growth and the country’s stock market has surged to unprecedented highs (except for this past week of course). Although concerns surrounding the US slowdown play a role, investor sentiment has remained bullish. The banking sector is now in the limelight. According to a report by report by McKinsey & Co, Indian banks generated a CAGR of 36.76% in returns to shareholders between January 2000 and October 2007, versus 24.03% for the entire Indian stock market and 17.57% for Chinese banks.

By Sundaramurthy Vadivelu

Disclosure

In conjunction with www.compete.com, The India Street has compiled the online statistics for India’s top Banks. In terms of Online usage in visits, ICICI Bank clearly leads the pack while Citibank is close behind. Noticeably, State Bank of India’s traffic has decreased 21% year over year while ICICI Bank has risen an astounding 76.9% year over year.

Disclosure

In this article let us discuss some stocks which look technically bearish for medium term. The analysis is based on weekly charts.