Benchmarks trade jubilantly in early deals

Indian equity benchmarks have made a positive start and are trading jubilantly ahead of Purchasing Managers' Index (PMI) numbers. Some support came in as the Finance Ministry expecting an improvement in the fiscal position in January-March quarter on a likely pick up in tax revenue realisation, receipts from spectrum auction and stake sale of PSUs. Sentiments also remained up-beat on reports that foreign institutional investors were net buyers in Indian equities worth Rs 18.20 crore January 1, 2015, as per provisional stock exchange data. Meanwhile, PSU banks such as SBI, PNB, Canara Bank, Bank of Baroda and Bank edged higher ahead of the two-day bankers’ retreat in Pune where consolidation among the PSBs is to be discussed among other financial matters.

On the global front, the US markets remained closed on the first trading day of the year, unable to give any cues to the other global markets. The Asian markets too are not trading in full, but the ones who are trading have made mostly a positive start of the New Year.

Back home, there was broad based buying witnessed in the markets and apart from the blue chips, the broader markets too equally participated in the rally. On the sectoral front, banking, power and metal witnessed the maximum gain in trade, while there were no losers on the BSE sectoral space. The broader indices too were trading in line with benchmarks, while the market breadth on the BSE was positive; there were 1,448 shares on the gaining side against 445 shares on the losing side while 44 shares remain unchanged.

The BSE Sensex is currently trading at 27792.45, up by 284.91 points or 1.04% after trading in a range of 27519.26 and 27810.84. There were 27 stocks advancing against 3 stocks declining on the index.

The broader indices were trading in green; the BSE Mid cap index was up by 0.87%, while Small cap index up by 0.85%.

The gaining sectoral indices on the BSE were Bankex up by 1.32%, Power up by 1.12%, Metal up by 1.01%, PSU up by 0.95%, Realty up by 0.90%, while there were no losers on the BSE sectoral indices.

The top gainers on the Sensex were HDFC up by 1.92%, ICICI Bank up by 1.86%, Tata Motors up by 1.56%, BHEL up by 1.49% and Axis Bank up by 1.44%. On the flip side, Bharti Airtel down by 0.12%, Hero MotoCorp down by 0.05% and Mahindra & Mahindra down by 0.00% were the top losers.

Meanwhile, India's external debt stood at $455.9 billion during the first six months of this fiscal, which was higher by 3.1 percent from March-end level. The rise in external debt during the period was due to long-term external debt particularly commercial borrowings and NRI deposits. The external debt consist of long-term debt of $369.5 billion up 4.7 percent from March 2014 and short-term debt $86.4 billion which was down 3.2 percent from March end level.

As per the Finance Ministry notification, share of commercial borrowings was highest at 35.4 percent of total external debt, followed by NRI deposits at 23.8 percent and multilateral debt at 11.7 percent. Sovereign external debt stood at $88.4 billion in September, up from $81.5 billion in March 2014.

Currency wise, the share of US dollar denominated debt continued to be the highest in external debt stock at 60.1 percent at end-September 2014, followed by the Indian rupee 24.2 percent, Special Drawing Rights (SDR) 6.5 percent, Japanese yen 4.5 percent and euro 3 percent.

The CNX Nifty is currently trading at 8367.75, up by 83.75 points or 1.01% after trading in a range of 8288.70 and 8370.85. There were 47 stocks advancing against 3 stocks declining on the index.

The top gainers on Nifty were Jindal Steel & Power up by 3.64%, ICICI Bank up by 1.97%, HDFC up by 1.95%, BHEL up by 1.56%, Tata Motors up by 1.53%. On the flip side, NMDC down by 0.27%, Mahindra & Mahindra down by 0.15% and Bharti Airtel down by 0.12% were the top losers.

Asian markets were trading mostly in the green, Hang Seng surged 169.36 points or 0.72% to 23,774.40, KOSPI Index increased 6.54 points or 0.34% to 1,922.13, Straits Times improved by 2.48 points or 0.07% to 3,367.63 and  Jakarta Composite was up by 10.88 points or 0.21% to 5,237.82.

On the flip side, FTSE Bursa Malaysia KLCI was down by 12.03 points or 0.68% to 1,749.22.