Tale of the Tape 

Hola Amigos!

Nifty and Sensex ended flat after a boring range-bound trading session. Midcaps (+0.3%) and Smallcaps (+0.4%) saw a slight bump. The advance-decline ratio was evenly split.

It was a mixed-bag kinda day for sectors. IT (+1.2%) was the top gainer, followed by Oil & Gas (+0.5%). Meanwhile, Pharma (-1.1%) and Metals (-1%) saw the most selling pressure.

Beware of fake buy orders! Read our top story to get the lowdown on SEBI’s crackdown on stock ‘spoofing’.

Trent was the top Nifty gainer after a surprising Q4 margin beat. Meanwhile TVS Motor (-3%) had a solid Q4 but was hit by profit-booking. More details below.

Sona BLW, Tata Tech, and Whirlpool of India saw big moves today. Check out their charts below to find out why.

The defence stock rally continued for Day 2. Data Patterns was the top NSE 500 gainer, soaring +15%. PS - we highlighted the stock last week here.

Aurobindo Pharma was down -3% after reporting a fire at its Kakinada facility.

Prestige Estates (+5%) gained after bagging RERA approval for its project in NCR’s Indirapuram. PS - CLSA sees a whopping +73% upside from current levels.

Q4 reactions. Go Digit General Insurance (-7%) was the top NSE 500 loser after profit-booking. PNB Housing Finance was up +5% after its net profit jumped +27% YoY.

Ather Energy IPO got subscribed 0.30x on day 2.

Market
Fake Orders, Real Trouble

Ever wonder if the intraday hype around a stock is being manipulated like crazy? Well, we have  more hard proof now with SEBI’s crackdown of a serious case of ‘spoofing’ - aka artificially creating demand or scarcity. Here’s what you need to know.

For the noobs: One way of knowing whether a stock might go up or down is by looking at its order book. If there’s demand, you’ll see a lot of buy orders. And if there’s an imminent meltdown, you’ll see a lot of sell orders.

So how did a broker called Patel Wealth Advisors take advantage of that? Well: 

• Step 1: Place a large amount of buy orders that are higher than the current market price and disclose them. FYI - this is unlikely to be executed. But when this shows up as pending orders, this influences other people to buy at CMP, which slowly drives up a stock’s price.

• Step 2: Start executing much smaller sell orders (which will easily go through) that you only partially disclose. These sell orders will take advantage of the stock’s price rise that they created.

• Step 3: Cancel all your pending buy orders and voila, profit!

If you think nobody could be fooled by this, SEBI says Patel Wealth was able to raise the prices of 173 stocks including Coffee Day Enterprises (from Rs 69.45 p/sh to Rs 73.15) and Syrma SGS Tech (Rs 309 p/sh to Rs 336.25 p/sh) and actually walk away with neat profit.

Big Picture: Do not try to guess a stock’s movement by just looking at pending orders. Even without spoofing, algorithms & apps have made this a crazy game. In 2025, the average number of trades per day hit 100 million. But average daily orders are a LOT higher at 16 billion. There’s legit reasons for this, but as SEBI has shown, there’s also some shady AF people as well. Be safe folks!

Specials
Stocks To Buy In This Pullback

Looking for the best stocks to buy in May 2025?

We’ve compiled a list of the top 5 Mid & Small Cap stocks recommended by SEBI RAs on Stocktwits to buy right now.