9 Large-Cap Stocks That Near Their 52-week Lows In Trade Today

Benchmark indices have plunged in trade on rising tensions between Russia and Ukraine. The Sensex is down 1,100 points, while the Nifty has shed more than 300 points today. Here are 10 largecap stocks that have been driven to near 52-week lows in trade today.

The list of stocks

Stocks	Current market price	52-week low price
Shree Cements	24080	23500
BPCL	359	356
Aurobindo Pharma	622	590
Dr Reddys	4202	4135
HDFC Life	570	551
GAIL	134	127
Colgate Palmolive	1406	1375
Concor	527	569
HDFC	2392	2290

Should you buy these stocks?

It is always hard to predict which way the stocks would go. Some of these names like HDFC and Colgate Palmolive are high quality names. Housing Development Finance Corporation looks a good bet as compared to most others. Once Foreign Portfolio Investors return back to the Indian markets, we could see the stock rally. Overall, we believe the stock has tremendous value.

At the moment we are not recommending to buy any pharma stocks as there could be some headwinds going ahead. In fact, these set of stocks have been languishing for sometime now. There is a possibility that they might just continue to stay lower for longer as investors remain disinterested in defensives.

A stock like BPCL is going to be impacted by rising crude prices. However, the only reason to be buying the stock is that the government is divesting its stake in the company. However, that has been in the news for sometime now and there is no telling when that could happen.

Shares in HDFC Life have been constantly falling

Shares in HDFC Life have constantly been falling on worries that the listing of LIC could lead to further competition and threat to growth. As investors are aware, Life Insurance Corporation plans to list its shares on the bourses sometime in March, and all regulatory preparations are underway.

We do not know if the threat could be real, but, most of the life insurance stocks like HDFC Life, and ICICI Prudential Life too have been falling. In fact, the later too is not far away from its 52-week low price. All in all, it is better to avoid these life insurance companies and look for companies that offer good dividend yields and reasonable price to earnings.

 

The right strategy to adopt in this market

Markets have been exceedingly volatile and we recommend that investors should buy into stocks only in small quantities. We believe that the stock markets would continue to be volatile as Russia-Ukraine tensions are only going to mount in the coming days.

In such a situation investors should buy into any decline in small quantities. For example, if you have about Rs 1 lakh at your disposal it would be advisable to deploy around one third of this and keep the remaining to invest at further declines. It is highly possible that the markets would fall even more from current levels.

Importantly, it is good for investors to buy into stocks only on declines and avoid stocks, if there is a sharp recovery in the same.