The market has lost further grounds on account of huge selling pressure continued in the selective scrips. The broader market is trading flat today as the Mid Cap is trading marginally lower while the Small Cap managed to trade in green. The Capital Goods, Oil & Gas, Bank and IT stocks are out of favor today while the sustained buying is seen in the Metal, FMCG and Realty stocks. The overall market breadth turns negative, as 1219 stocks are advancing while 1299 stocks are declining and the 57 stocks remained unchanged on BSE.

The BSE Mid cap is lower by 40 points at 6,231 while the BSE small Cap advanced by 12 points to trade at 7,451.

At 12.30 pm, BSE Sensex was at 15,899 down by 188 points and Nifty was at 4,789.90 down by 38.95 points.

BSE Metal index inclined by 17.05 points to trade at 13,762.23. The major gainers are Gujarat NRE (6.35%), Hindalco Industries (5.07%), NALCO (4.02%) and Bhusan Steel (1.10%).

BSE Capital goods index dropped by 172.84 points to 13,621.20. The main losers are Siemens (2.75%), BEML (2.48%), Bharat Electrical (1.91%) and Havells India (2.70%).

BSE Banks index slipped by 147.69 points to trade at 8,154.11. The top losers are AXIX Bank (3.70%), Bank of India (2.92%), Yes Bank (1.65%) and HDFC Bank (1.54%).

BSE Health Care index inclined marginally by 0.75 points to trade at 3,738.26 as Sun Pharma (2.52%), Cipla (1.58%), Lupin (1.29%), Glaxosmith (1.90%) and Pfizer (0.43%) are trading in positive.

Sun pharmaceuticals has received the USFDA approval for the abbreviated new drug application to market a generic version of forest Lab’s Tessalon, benzonatate capsules.

Cipla has developed a combination of drugs including the medicines for allergic rhinitis, asthama and cardiac-problems for the developed markets. The company expects to bring the allergic rhinitis drug into the market next year and the other two combination drugs in the asthama and cardiac are expected by 2010.

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The Bangalore University has inked an MoU with the National School of Insurance Education and Research (NASIER), a non-profit organisation represented by the insurance industry, to offer courses designed to create manpower required for the burgeoning insurance industry in the country.

The courses will be offered from the next academic year, for which the university in partnership with NASIER is preparing a comprehensive course module. The university aims to offer the new courses at the undergraduate and graduate level to start with. The two programmes that the university intends to offer include Bachelor of Insurance & Actuary (BIA) and Postgraduate Diploma in Insurance & Financial (PGDIF).

The BIA course will be of three year duration and the students after completion of their pre-university course (10+2) can join it. The PGDIF course is meant for graduates who needs to specialise in Insurance, as well as insurance professionals who are already working with the industry. The duration of this programme will be of one year’’s duration.

Insurance industry is among the top five recruiters in India presently. There are 16 companies offering services in the life insurance space, and 15 companies are operating in the general insurance space in the country. Besides, 10 new companies are waiting for licences to start their operations in the Indian market. The Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry of India has projected a five-fold increase in the size of Indian insurance business to $60 billion by 2010. Of this, life insurance business alone will be about $35 billion, while the rest are estimated to be non-life insurance business. Meanwhile, the BU is also planning to introduce new programmes to create resource pool required for the banking industry.

US stock market closed higher on the back of the comments from Standard & Poor that the banks might be finished with the bulk of write-downs on subprime securities and the magnitude of some write-downs is greater than any reasonable estimate of losses. S&P said write-downs could reach $285 billion, from the current level of $150 billion. Standard & Poor’’s also said that the bank that have already announced their full year 2007 results may also face write down. The financial was mostly hitted on renewed credit concerns by due to reports that a Carlyle Group fund is close to collapse. Further the worst than expected retail sales figure for the month of February has led the market to trade cautiously. The retail sales fell 0.6%, which fell short of the expected 0.2% rise. However, on the positive side the unemployment claims remained unchanged at 53,000 for the week ended March 8.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) advanced by 35.50 points to close at 12,145.74. The S&P 500 (SPX) index increased by 6.71 points to close at 1,315.48 and the NASDAQ Composite (RIXF) grew 19.74 points to close at 2,263.61.

Among the Dow’’s 30 components, 14 components ended in red mainly led by the stocks like American Express, Citigroup and JP Morgan down by 2.7%, 0.7% and 1.3% respectively.

A total of 1.1bn shares were traded on the NASDAQ, with advancing stocks outpaced the declining stocks by 17 to 11.

Crude oil futures for the month of April delivery closed higher by $0.41 at $110.32 per barrel on New York Mercantile Exchange. The oil prices have touched a new record high during the intraday at $111 per barrel earlier in the session. The crude prices grew on the back of the weak economic data announced by the Commerce Department. The price rallied despite the Energy Department reported a surprise increase in weekly crude inventory.

The gold prices for the month of April delivery grew by $13.30 to settle at $993.80 an ounce on the New York Mercantile Exchange.

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The insurance sector is planned to become one of the biggest employment generators in India. Private insurance companies such as ICICI Prudential Life, Bajaj Allianz and HDFC Standard Life have virtually increase their employee strength in the past one year. The insurance industry figures among the top five recruiters in the country after the BPO- IT, banking and retail sectors. ICICI Prudential has increased its employee strength from 16,000 to 30,000 over the last year and the company continues to hire aggressively. It has joined hands with 21 management institutes such as XLRI and Narsee Monjee Institute of Management Studies to offer post graduate diploma courses in insurance and management for freshers. The company has recruited 2,000 candidates through this route in the past six months. Bajaj Allianz Life has around 28,000 employees and plans to recruit a minimum 10,000 more in the next fiscal. SBI Life has recruited 300 freshers through campus recruitment over the past year. The company currently has 3,700 employees and plans to add 2,000 more in the next fiscal.