Post Session: Quick Review

Bulls woke up from slumber after three consecutive sessions of drubbing, leading to positive session of trade at Dalal Street ahead of long weekend, as equity markets will remain shut for trade tomorrow on account of ‘Good Friday’.  In the extremely sanguine session of trade, benchmarks did not once witness an iota of profit-booking and after making a positive start, kept adding ground till the close of trade. Good earnings from HCL Technologies and TCS, which spelled optimism across entire IT pivotal, lifted mood at Indian equity markets. Additionally, US Fed’s Chairwoman’s dovish comments, also underpinned some gains at Dalal Street. By close, both Sensex and Nifty locking gains of over one and half percent, ended above the crucial 22, 600 and little shy of psychological 6800 levels respectively. Meanwhile, broader indices too following suite, puffed up similar magnitude of gains to the larger counterparts.

On the global front, Asian markets ended mixed on Thursday, as a positive report on the US economy and the Federal Reserve chief's pledge to keep interest rates at record lows were offset by profit-taking after the previous day's gains. On the flip side, European shares, edged lower weighed down by weakness in luxury drinks after a crackdown on gift giving in China knocked beverage company earnings, in quiet trade ahead of a public holiday, were trading weak in early deals.

Closer home, broad based gains were witnessed at Dalal Street as investors lapped up all the fundamentally strong stocks which were available at attractive valuation after recent drubbing. No sectoral indices on BSE witnessed profit-booking, nonetheless, gains were led by stocks belonging to Realty, Auto and Banking counters. Besides, telecommunication stock rang loud in trade on plans of telecom department to facilitate a mix of subsidies, grants and overseas borrowings through multilateral agencies to help cash-strapped telcos invest in green energy technologies mandated by the government.

On the result front, HCL Technologies rose over a percent after the IT major reported better-than-expected earnings for quarter ended March 2014 on the back of strong margins. Its net profit grew to Rs 1,624 crore, up 8.5 per cent, from Rs 1,496 crore, in previous quarter. Additionally, TCS stocks clinched similar amount of gains after country’s largest IT services exporter reported a better than expected 51.5 percent increase in the last three months. The market breadth on the BSE ended positive; advances and declining stocks were in a ratio of 1717: 1054, while 147 scrips remained unchanged. (Provisional)

The BSE Sensex gained 351.61 points or 1.58% to settle at 22,628.84. The index touched a high and a low of 22,648.69 and 22,312.19 respectively. Among the 30-share Sensex, 29 stocks gained, while 1 stocks declined. (Provisional)

The BSE Mid cap and Small cap indices ended higher by 1.47% and 1.43% respectively. (Provisional)

On the BSE Sectoral front, Realty up by 2.79%, Auto up by 2.25%, Metal up by 1.85%, Power up by 1.81% and Oil & Gas up by 1.79% were the top gainers, while there were the no losers in the space. (Provisional)

The top gainers on the Sensex were Tata Motors up by 4.57%, Hindalco up by 4.54%, ICICI Bank up by 3.33%, BHEL up by 3.25% and SBI up by 2.89%. On the other hand, HDFC Bank down by 1.06% was the only loser in the index. (Provisional)

Meanwhile, Commerce Secretary Rajeev Kher has asserted that Indian exports will cross $325 billion in the current fiscal year on the back of recovery witnessing in the global economy. Rajeev Kher stressed that India's performance on exports front will improve as US economy is certainly going up, while the European countries are showing sign of stabilization.

The exports target for FY 15 will be set by the new government formed after the general election. In FY14, India's exports grew marginally by 3.96 percent to $312.35 billion, which was below the set export target at $325 billion. The contraction in exports was mainly driven by fall in shipments of country’s most exports orientated sectors such as petroleum, gems and jewellery, engineering and pharmaceuticals. Petroleum exports, which account for about 20 percent of India's outward shipments, dipped 0.01% to $60.85 billion in FY14, while engineering exports registered growth of 8.49% respectively to $61.61 billion.

The five-year foreign trade policy FTP (2009-14) ended on March 31 and the new government will introduce new FTP for the period 2014-19. Presently, India's share in global trade stands at about 2 percent.  India’s exports have been hovering near $300 billion over the last three fiscal years and it has become imperative to boost country’s exports and enhance its contribution in the world trade. Meanwhile, the new FTP is likely to promote exports of specific products in specific geographies and would also abolish conventional method of exports through focusing more on areas like high-tech items, branding of products in the global market and new strategy for marketing. 

India VIX, a gauge for markets short-term expectation of marginally lost 0.98% at 30.85 from its previous close of 31.16 on Wednesday. (Provisional)

The CNX Nifty gained 103.25 points or 1.55% to settle at 6,778.55. The index touched high and low of 6,783.05 and 6,684.40 respectively. Out of the 50 stocks on the Nifty, 47 ended in the green, while 3 ended in the red. 

The major gainers of the Nifty were Tata Motors up 4.63%, Hindalco up by 4.47%, Jindal Steel up by 4.08%, Ambuja Cements up by 3.97% and ICICI Bank up by 3.39%. The key losers were HDFC Bank down by 1.10%, Power Grid down by 0.84% and United Spirits down by 0.69%. (Provisional)

The European markets were trading in red; France’s CAC 40 was down by 0.19%, Germany’s DAX was down by 0.20% and UK’s FTSE 100 down by 0.26%.

The Asian markets concluded Thursday’s trade mostly in green following a third straight rally on Wall Street. Bank of Japan Governor Haruhiko Kuroda stated that aggressive easy policy launched last April will continue and will take Japan out of years of deflation. Kuroda added that the outlook for consumer prices was up, with the year-on-year rate in core consumer prices expected to be around 1.25% for some time, not including a sales tax hike on April 1 to 8% from 5%. Kuroda enlightened that BOJ’s mantra will continue with quantitative and qualitative easing, aiming to achieve the price stability target of 2%, by 2015. Japanese Household Confidence rose to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 37.5.

China’s slump in property sales and construction is spurring speculation that the government’s four-year-old campaign of real-estate controls will start to crack. The value and volume of home sales in China fell more quickly in the first three months of this year from the January-February period as parties continued to adopt a wait-and-see stance. The value of new homes sold across the country shed 7.7% from the same period a year earlier to 1.1 trillion yuan ($177 billion) during the first quarter. In the first two months of the year, the value fell 5% year on year. The volume of new homes sold fell 5.7% from a year ago to 178.3 million square meters while it shed 1.2% in the first two months.