ITC among Kunal Bothra's 3 stock picks for this week

ICICI Bank, ITC and Nalco are three stocks on which market expert Kunal Bothra is bullish on for this week. Edited excerpts from an interview:

After Nifty closed comfortably above 18,000, what are the levels that you are looking forward to?
Many underperforming sectors and stocks like ITC made a good comeback last week. Stocks which were in high momentum like IRCTC did exceptionally well. So this market is full of different kind of flavours. It is difficult to put into the context of sectoral rotation. But the moves in the last couple of weeks indicates that this market could probably head up higher from current levels as well. The nearest support which I would look at now would be 18,000-18,100. This is where a huge amount of Put writing chunk has been seen on the weekly as well as on the monthly option. So I would keep that as a base or as a support territory. Any kind of dip towards the support level on the index should be bought into.

Which stocks would be on your radar this week?
For the new week, I am expecting a couple of names to do exceptionally well. From the banking pack, I am recommending ICICI Bank. It has been an underperformer but I believe that the stock made a good comeback even though it did not cross above its previous major swing high. Momentum coming back into the banking index as well as the stock indicates that the stock could probably break past above the previous resistances. So I would suggest a buy on ICICI Bank with a target of Rs 755. A stop loss should be kept at Rs 713.

The second would be a buy on ITC. The stock has crossed back above the Rs 250 hurdle which was a minor resistance for ITC. So I think the next range shift for the stock could be around Rs 280-285 zone. So I would suggest a buy with Rs 280 as the target price. A stop loss could be kept near Rs 240.

The third is a buy on Nalco from the metals pack. I am expecting that many of these metal stocks could end their consolidation. It could be the start of a strong uptrend. Nalco has been one of the top performers from the metals space. It has been one of the few midcap stocks which has come back to its previous major swing high on the monthly time frame charts. So I would suggest a buy on Nalco with a target of Rs 125. A stop loss should be kept at Rs 100.