Markets climb to day’s high on sustained buying activities

Going from strength to strength, local equity markets were trading at day’s high with gains of over half a percent which lifted both Sensex and Nifty above psychologically crucial 28,700 and 8,700 levels respectively on sustained buying activities by both funds and retail investors thanks to positive global cues. Meanwhile, the session also turned out to be fruitful for broader indices, which outperforming larger counterparts were trading with gains in the range of 0.90-1.75%.

On the global front, Asian stocks were mostly higher on Wednesday after Japan's central bank maintained its expansively easy monetary policy. The Bank of Japan on much expected lines maintained its policy of super-easy lending. Japan is trying to escape two decades of economic stagnation and deflation by massively expanding the supply of money in the world's No. 3 economy.

Closer home, with buying being mostly broad-based, the sectoral indices on BSE were holding higher, nevertheless stocks from Consumer Durables, Information Technology and Realty counters were the top gainers of the session. Meanwhile, auto and banking staged a bounce-back after previous session’s drubbing which was mainly after RBI maintained a status quo stance in its first bi monthly monetary policy 2015-16. The overall market breadth on BSE was in the favour of advances which thumped declines in the ratio of 1354:643; while 27 shares remained unchanged.

The BSE Sensex is currently trading at 28709.24, up by 192.65 points or 0.68% after trading in a range of 28566.61 and 28729.16. There were 21 stocks advancing against 9 stocks declining on the index.

The broader indices were trading in green; the BSE Mid cap index was up by 0.94%, while Small cap index up by 1.75%.

With buying being broad-based none of the sectoral indices on BSE were trading into red. Nevertheless, the gaining sectoral indices on the BSE were Realty up by 1.74%, Consumer Durables up by 1.71%, IT up by 1.67%, Metal up by 1.54%, Oil & Gas up by 1.45%.

The top gainers on the Sensex were Coal India up by 5.11%, Reliance Industries up by 3.10%, Infosys up by 1.62%, TCS up by 1.62% and Bharti Airtel up by 1.59%. On the flip side, Sesa Sterlite down by 1.67%, HDFC down by 1.60%, NTPC down by 0.90%, ONGC down by 0.79% and Hero MotoCorp down by 0.75% were the top losers.

Meanwhile, India’s central bank governor, Raghuram Rajan, being extremely positive on the economy, pointed to the green shoots that have now started showing up in the investment climate. Besides, he also asserted that while the rates of stalled projects were coming down, investment intentions were picking up with the economy beginning to see the start of an investment cycle. Data put out by Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE) on Tuesday also points out to a revival in investment growth. He however, cautioned that these were just early signs and not calls for celebration.

Further, the governor also refrained from commenting on the new series on economic growth numbers by the Central Statistics Office (CSO) and said that he was trying to understand the new series as he felt that determining potential growth wasn’t that easy with such a short series of data.

The governor emphasized that as the growth process for the country kick-starts, the government would have to be mindful of on issues relating to fuelling such expansion with sufficient funding options. He also drew some attention of government to capital needs of PSU banks and highlighted that there was some room for the banks, especially the state-run ones to access the markets to raise capital from the market over and above what they can do from the government.

The CNX Nifty is currently trading at 8721.75, up by 61.45 points or 0.71% after trading in a range of 8679.80 and 8728.45. There were 35 stocks advancing against 15 stocks declining on the index.

The top gainers on Nifty were Coal India up by 5.03%, BPCL up by 3.77%, Reliance Industries up by 3.20%, Ultratech Cement up by 2.63% and Tech Mahindra up by 2.60%. On the flip side, Idea Cellular down by 2.54%, Sesa Sterlite down by 1.82%, HDFC down by 1.67%, NTPC down by 1.15% and ONGC down by 1.05% were the top losers.

Asian markets were trading mixed; with KOSPI Index trading higher by 12.23 points or 0.6% to 2,059.26; Shanghai Composite trading higher by 18.23 points or 0.46% to 3,979.60; Nikkei 225 trading higher by 149.27 points or 0.76% to 19,789.81 and Hang Seng trading higher by 671.84 points or 2.66% to 25,947.48.

On the flip side, Taiwan Weighted slid by 69.93 points or 0.73% to 9,571.97;Jakarta Composite slid by 25.85 points or 0.47% to 5,497.45; Straits Times slid by 7.62 points or 0.22% to 3,458.00 and FTSE Bursa Malaysia KLCI slid by 6.88 points or 0.37% to 1,849.63.