Post Session: Quick Review

Indian markets in a steady day of trade extended their gains for the sixth straight session with benchmarks strengthening by over half a percent. Markets gained momentum after some initial stabilization and never looked back throughout the day, though there were intermittent profit booking but broad based buying supported the markets to maintain their contour till the last. Traders got a fillip with government’s announcement of initiative to further ease procedures for seeking permission of the Foreign Investment Promotion Board (FIPB) for foreign direct investment (FDI).

The global markets too gave a supportive cue to the local markets from the very beginning, with US markets closing in green and Asia markets extending their gains on optimism ahead of a European Central Bank meeting on bailout conditions for Greece. The Japanese market touched a fresh eight-year high, with a weaker yen boosting export-oriented stocks after Bank of Japan kept its monetary policy unchanged as expected.

Back home, optimism over the forthcoming Budget boosted the sentiments of the market participants after External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj said that the government will unveil more reforms in the coming days, including in the forthcoming budget this month to woo foreign investment and make India a manufacturing destination. Traders even overlooked the report of SBI Composite Index, an indicator for tracking India's manufacturing activity, registering a month-on-month decline to 48.3 in February 2015 from 52.1 in January 2015. Back on street, barring some weakness in realty, metal and oil & gas all the sectoral indices on the BSE managed a positive close.  There was buzz in the  defence related stocks after Prime minister Narendra Modi making a strong pitch for military indigenisation, said that the country's defence industry was at the core of his ‘Make in India’ mission. Prime Minister said even a 20-25 per cent decrease in defence import can create 2 lakh jobs. Also, a 25 percent hike in domestic defence output can create 1 lakh skilled jobs. Pipavav Defence and Offshore surged by over 12%, Astra Microwave Products zoomed by around 17%, Bharat Electronics was up by 9%, Bharat Forge was up by over 4% and M&M was up by over 1%. Telecom stocks gave a mixed response to report of aggressive deposit of earnest money for the spectrum auction of next month by Reliance Industries’ telecom arm Reliance Jio and while Idea cellular ended up by over a percent, Bharti Airtel and RCom lost over two percent.Broader markets too showed a steady trade, going neck-in-neck to the benchmarks.

The BSE Sensex ended at 29298.19, up by 162.31 points or 0.56% after trading in a range of 29126.91 and 29411.32. There were 20 stocks gaining side against 10 stocks on the declining side on the index. The market breadth on BSE ended in positive, out of 2979 stocks traded,1580 stocks advanced, while 1291 stocks declined. (Provisional)

The broader indices outperformed the benchmarks; the BSE Mid cap index was up by 0.89%, while Small cap index ended higher by 1.06%.(Provisional)

The top gaining sectoral indices on the BSE were Consumer Durables up by 1.99%, Power up by 1.44%, Capital Goods up by 1.33%, IT up by 1.10%, Auto up by 0.89% while, Metal down by 0.90%, Realty down by 0.45%, Oil & Gas down by 0.40%, INFRA down by 0.16%, PSU down by 0.02% were the losing indices on BSE.(Provisional)

The top gainers on the Sensex were HDFC up by 2.79%, Tata Power up by 2.26%, TCS up by 1.96%, Tata Motors up by 1.45% and Mahindra & Mahindra up by 1.34%. On the flip side, Hero MotoCorp down by 4.89%, Sesa Sterlite down by 3.57%, Bharti Airtel down by 2.37%, ONGC down by 2.35% and Bajaj Auto down by 0.97% were the top losers.(Provisional)

Meanwhile, showing the falling manufacturing sector’s condition in the country the SBI Composite Index, an indicator for tracking India's manufacturing activity, has registered a month-on-month decline to 48.3 (low decline) in February 2015 from 52.1 (moderate growth) in January 2015. However, the yearly SBI composite index for February 2015 inched up to 52.9 (moderate growth) from 52.1 (moderate growth) in January 2015, a two month high. As per the SBI’s composite index, a value of less than 42 means large decline while a value of 42 to 46 means moderate decline, 46 to 50 (low decline), 50 to 52 (low growth), 52 to 55 (moderate growth) and above 55 (high growth).

Though, SBI has noted that sharp contraction in the month-on-month index can be attributed to less number of working days in February as compared to January. The Index which captures two components of the manufacturing cycle - month-on-month and year-on-year-growth on a scale of 0 to 100 has also stated that revival in automobile sales, capital goods and consumer non-durables production and possible upturn in the credit offtake by large corporates segment highlights possible recovery in the economic activity in coming months.

However, on the flip side, it stated that the consumer durable sales have not yet bottomed out  and the bank credit and deposit continue to remain sluggish. Though, benign wholesale as well as retail inflation accompanied by a lower cost of borrowing is expected to boost positive sentiment in the economy in coming months and possibly drive credit cycle and growth.

The CNX Nifty ended at 8869.10, up by 59.75 points or 0.68% after trading in a range of 8808.90 and 8894.30. There were 35 stocks advancing against 15 stocks declining on the index.(Provisional)

The top gainers on Nifty were HDFC up by 3.15%, Tata Power up by 2.56%, HCL Tech. up by 2.43%, ACC up by 2.41% and Jindal Steel & Power up by 2.10%. On the flip side, Hero MotoCorp down by 5.04%, NMDC down by 4.35%, DLF down by 3.57%, Sesa Sterlite down by 3.00% and Bharti Airtel down by 2.59% were the top losers. (Provisional)

Asian markets ended ended mostly in green, Straits Times ended up by 19.75 points or 0.58% to 3,435.66, Hang Seng was up by 47.2 points or 0.19% to 24,832.08, Jakarta Composite added 52.95 points or 0.99% to 5,390.45, Nikkei 225 surged by 212.08 points or 1.18% to 18,199.17, on the other hand FTSE Bursa Malaysia KLCI declined marginally by 2.22 points or 0.12% to 1,807.87

European Markets made a positive start, UK’s FTSE 100 was up by 4.47 points or 0.06% to 6,902.60, France’s CAC gained 38.64 points or 0.81% to 4,792.63 and Germany’s DAX increased 55.19 points or 0.51% to 10,950.81.

The Asian indices ended mostly in green on Wednesday, as pessimism about the Greek debt saga receded somewhat. Shanghai Stock Exchange and Seoul Composite were closed today on account of ‘Lunar New Year’ holiday, while Taiwan Stock Exchange was closed on account of ‘Lunar New Year’s Eve’ holiday. The Bank of Japan decided by an 8 to 1 vote to leave the bank’s policy target unchanged and upgraded its assessment of exports and factory output, while warning consumption has been hit by a April 2014 sales tax hike. On the monetary policy target, the BoJ repeated it will conduct money market operations so that the monetary base will increase at an annual pace of about 80 trillion yen and that its financial asset purchases will also proceed after they expanded on October 31.

Annual inflation in Malaysia fell to a more than five-year low of 1.0 percent in January as oil prices skidded, but economists do not expect the central bank to follow others and respond by cutting interest rates. Central banks around the world have been taking advantage of easing inflation to cut rates to shore up flagging growth, but Malaysia’s economy has defied sliding oil and commodity prices, growing much faster than expected in the fourth quarter.