Mystery seller offloads Infosys shares on earnings day

Whodunit? Last Friday when IT major Infosys Technologies announced its earnings soon after the market opened, a few lakh shares were sold in an early trade, which caught the attention of some brokers closely tracking the stock’'s movement on that day.

As it usually happens, the standalone numbers were flashed first, and the consolidated figures followed after a few minutes. The time-lag between the release of the two set of numbers was used to sell about 3 lakh shares by some unknown entity or entities, raising suspicion that the seller(s) could have got the whiff of the consolidated results, which later turned out to be below market expectations, even before other stock market participants could know about them.

Early morning selling would have helped them to exit at higher levels, thereby escaping the sharp fall in the share price triggered by the disappointing earnings, said the brokers. From its intra-day high of Rs 3,298.6, the Infosys Technologies stock tumbled 9.6% to close at Rs 2,989.5 on Friday. It witnessed subdued movement on subsequent days, before ending flat at Rs 2,909 on Thursday.

Contributed by Vijay Gurav