Domestic bourses gain strength; Sensex recaptures 16,000 level

After trading between positive and negative terrain near the flat line in morning trade, key benchmarks gained strength in mid morning trade and are trading near their day’s high with Sensex recapturing its crucial 16,000 mark while, Nifty crawl near its 4,800 mark as index heavyweights Reliance Industries (RIL) and L&T edged higher in the trade. Meanwhile, Reliance Anil Dhirubhai Ambani (ADA) group shares edged higher on report that Kokilaben Ambani -- mother of Mukesh and Anil on December 26, 2011, said that the two brothers do not have any differences between them and that they are together now. IT stocks too supported the sentiments with stocks like Wipro, TCs and HCL Tech edged higher after a slew of recent strong economic data in the US, the biggest outsourcing market for IT services exporters. Moreover, broader indices too witnesses some traction and going neck to neck with benchmarks. The overall market breadth on BSE is in the favour of advances which have thrashed declines in the ratio of 1124:789, while 84 shares remained unchanged.

The BSE Sensex is currently trading at 16,019.81, up by 49.06 points or 0.31%. The index has a touched a high and low of 16,019.95 and 15,928.92 respectively.  There were 19 stocks advancing against only 9 declines while 2 stocks remained unchanged on the index.

The broader indices too were trading with decent gains; the BSE Mid cap and Small cap indices surged 0.35% and 0.39% respectively.

Buying was witnessed across the board. The top gaining sectoral indices on the BSE were, Capital goods up by 1.04%, Oil & Gas up by 0.68%, TECk up by 0.65%, IT up by 0.64%, and Consumer Durables was up by 0.53%. While, Bankex down 0.25% and FMCG down 0.23% were the only losers on the index.

The top gainers on the Sensex were Tata Power up by 2.03%, L&T up by 1.99%, Sterlite Industries was up by 1.07%  Hindalco up by 0.99% and Wipro up by 0.98%. On the flip side, Cipla down by 1.22%, ITC down 0.71%, HDFC Bank down 0.63%, Tata Motors down 0.51% and NTPC down 0.22% were the top loser on the Sensex.

Meanwhile, giving a big relief to the government and industry, industrial growth in key infrastructure areas bounced back to 6.8% in November after touching a five-year low of 0.3% in October. As per the data released, the turnaround in industrial production has been possible due the combined output rise of eight core industries - coal, crude oil, natural gas, refinery products, fertilizers, steel, cement and electricity - which recorded the highest growth in 4-months, and also sharply higher than the annual growth of 3.7% in November last year.

On the other hand, due to lagging performance in the previous months, the April-November growth of core industries stood at 4.6% as against 5.6% in the same period last financial year, according to the data released. Except for crude oil, natural gas and fertilizers, all other segments registered a healthy growth in November. The maximum growth was witnessed in cement, which expanded by 16.6%, while there was a contraction of 4.3% in the same period last financial year.

The eight infrastructure sectors, account for nearly 38% of the IIP, the measure of industrial activity in India and hence are likely to improve the total industrial production. The biggest relief in core sector’s data was the 4.9% rise in coal production, the highest since March 2010 and the first expansion after three straight months of contraction. Electricity and steel output grew by 14.1% and 5.1% against 3.5% and 7.6%, respectively, in the same month last year. Petroleum refinery products growth also went up by 11.2% during the month under reference.

Power grew 14.1% from a year earlier, compared with 5.4% in the previous month. In the eight months to November, it added 9.3% compared with 4.6% in the previous year. However, crude oil and natural gas output posted a de-growth of 5.6% and 10.1% from a positive growth of 17% and 5.5%, y-o-y, respectively.

During October, the core sector, registered a dismal growth of 0.3%. This slowdown in the industry output was obvious from the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) figures, which stood at 6.9% - the lowest in the past nine quarters, during the July-September quarter. The economic growth in the first half of the current fiscal also slowed down to 7.3% from 8.6% in the year ago period.

The S&P CNX Nifty is currently trading at 4,792.75, higher by 13.75 points or 0.29%. The index has touched a high and low of 4,793.15 and 4,765.35 respectively.  There were 33 stocks advancing against 15 declines while 2 stocks remained unchanged on the index.

The top gainers of the Nifty were RCOM up by 4.75%, Reliance Infra up by 3.17%, Tata Power up by 2.32%, Ambuja Cement up by 2.22% and L&T up by 2.06%.

On the flip side, Cipla down by 1.20%, Kotak Bank down by 1.13%, Power Grid down 0.89%, ITC down 0.76% and Tata Motors down by 0.72% remained the top losers on the index.

Most of the Asian equity indices were trading in the red; Jakarta Composite was down 31.74 points or 0.84% to 3,765.41, Nikkei 225 was down 36.19 points or 0.43% to 8,443.15, Straits Times was down 2.06 points or 0.08% to 2,674.32, Seoul Composite was down 15.74 points or 0.85% to 1,841.89 and Taiwan Weighted was down 11.61 points or 0.16% to 7,080.97.

On the flip side, Shanghai Composite was up by 1.12 points or 0.05% to 2,191.23.