Market manages to hold gains despite profit taking in realty, power and metal

Markets are managing to hold their gains in early noon trade and despite some profit booking both the major indices were up by about half a percent. Although the Asian markets were not supportive but traders were taking cues from Reserve Bank of India Governor, Raghuram Rajan’s statement that India should not settle for anything less than double-digit economic growth in the medium term after making substantial progress in securing its macroeconomic fundamentals since late 2013. Trade on the street were getting mainly impacted by result announcements, traders reacting to the performance on quarterly results were punishing or rewarding the individual stocks. Bharti Airtel after posting a weak set of numbers in last session was down by about a percent; Aurobindo Pharma too after disappointing numbers was trading lower by over 5%. The company has registered a fall of 5.71% in its standalone net profit, while its consolidated net profit declined by 7.93%. Back on street, there was some value buying in IT and tech stocks on rupee weakness after the dollar gained against other global currencies. On the other hand realty, power, metal, oil & gas and consumer durables suffered profit taking.

The BSE Sensex is currently trading at 28961.23, up by 78.12 points or 0.27% after trading in a range of 28824.88 and 29054.26. There were 13 stocks advancing against 17 stocks declining on the index.

The broader indices were trading in green; the BSE Mid cap index was up by 0.07%, while Small cap index up by 0.08%.

The top gaining sectoral indices on the BSE were IT up by 1.78%, TECK up by 1.34%, FMCG up by 0.41%, Bankex up by 0.28%, while Realty down by 1.53%, Power down by 0.97%, Metal down by 0.69%, INFRA down by 0.61%, Oil & Gas down by 0.61% were the losing indices on BSE.

The top gainers on the Sensex were Wipro up by 2.57%, Infosys up by 2.10%, Axis Bank up by 1.93%, HDFC up by 1.85% and Hindustan Unilever up by 1.39%. On the flip side, Tata Power down by 3.99%, ONGC down by 2.80%, GAIL India down by 2.31%, Mahindra & Mahindra down by 1.93% and Sesa Sterlite down by 1.78% were the top losers.

Meanwhile, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) finally announced and put out the names of applicants for Payments and Small Finance Banks on its website. In all, 113 applications for small finance banks and payment banks were received by RBI. Out of these, for Payments Banks it got 41 applications and for Small Finance Banks it received 72 applications.

There were lots of surprise applicants for the new phse of banking licences, while Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Industries (RIL) teamed up with state-run behemoth SBI to apply for a payments bank licence. Bharti Airtel, through its wholly-owned subsidiary Airtel M Commerce Services (AMSL), applied for a Payments Bank licence with Kotak Mahindra Bank as a partner. Department of Post, Tech Mahindra, Videocon Group and stock exchange NSE have joined big corporates to seek entry into banking business.

Not only big corporate, but as many as 12 individuals like ex-Fino Managing Director Manish Khera and V Balakrishnan former CFO of Infosys have applied under Small Finance Bank category. On the same time six applications from individuals like Kishore Biyani of Future Group, M G George Muthoot, chairman of Muthoot Group and Dilip S Shanghvi, MD of Sun Pharma were submitted for Payments Bank.

RBI has constituted two separate committees and Usha Thorat, former RBI deputy governor has been appointed the chairperson of external advisory committee for Small Finance Bank with other members on the panel for Small Finance Bank including M S Sahoo, secretary of the Institute of Company Secretaries of India, M S Sriram professor at IIM Bangalore, and M Balachandra, chairman of National Payments Corp of India. For the external advisory committee on Payment Bank, Nachiket Mor, a director on RBI’s central board will be heading the panel. With other members including Roopa Kudva, former MD&CEO of Crisil, Shubhalakshmi Panse, for CMD of Allahabad Bank and Deepak Phatak, chair professor IIT Bombay. The RBI though has not suggested any timeframe for the committee to accept or reject the applications.

The CNX Nifty is currently trading at 8743.55, up by 19.85 points or 0.23% after trading in a range of 8705.05 and 8768.30. There were 19 stocks advancing against 31 stocks declining on the index.

The top gainers on Nifty were BPCL up by 3.96%, HCL Tech. up by 2.67%, Asian Paints up by 2.44%, Wipro up by 2.41% and Infosys up by 2.29%.

On the flip side, Tata Power down by 3.88%, ONGC down by 2.96%, Cairn India down by 2.78%, Hindalco down by 2.30% and Bank Of Baroda down by 2.30% were the top losers.

Asian markets barring the Chinese one were trading in red; Shanghai Composite was up by 18.77 points or 0.59% to 3,192.90, Hang Seng was higher by 102.78 points or 0.42% to 24,782.54.

On the other hand, Nikkei 225 was down by 174.12 points or 0.98% to 17,504.62, Jakarta Composite lost 40.2 points or 0.76% to 5,275.08, Straits Times was lower by 14.58 points or 0.43% to 3,402.99, KOSPI Index was down by 9.95 points or 0.51% to 1,952.84, Taiwan Weighted was lower by 1.87 points or 0.02% to 9,512.05 and FTSE Bursa Malaysia KLCI was tad lower by 0.78 points or 0.04% to 1,802.24.