Markets continue to exhibit weakness ahead of F&O expiry

Local equity markets after slipping into negative territory continued trading weak with losses of around half of a percent that dragged Sensex and Nifty below psychologically crucial 27,450 and 8,300 levels respectively, on relentless selling activities by market-participants in absence of any fresh positive triggers amidst mixed regional counterparts. However, markets after making a good start surrendered all gains and were trading near day’s low point on account of volatility ahead of F&O expiry later in the day. Meanwhile, the session also was negative for broader indices, which were trading down with losses in the range of 0.20-0.60%.

On the global front, index of Asian shares fell on Thursday as the Chinese, Hong Kong and Australian markets slipped on US Federal Reserve rate hike fears. Meanwhile, European shares treaded water just below previous closes, as talks continued about Greece's ongoing financial crisis.

Closer home, with selling being broad based in nature, most of the sectoral indices on BSE were holding into negative territory, with stocks from Infrastructure, Realty and Public Sector Undertaking counters being the top losers of the session. On the flip side, only Oil & Gas counter was in green.  The overall market breadth on BSE was in the favour of declines which thumped advances in the ratio of 1163:825; while 64 shares remained unchanged on BSE.

The BSE Sensex is currently trading at 27440.28, down by 124.38 points or 0.45% after trading in a range of 27434.06 and 27666.37. There were 8 stocks advancing against 21 stocks declining on the index.

The broader indices were trading in red; the BSE Mid cap index was down by 0.59%, while Small cap index lost 0.20%.

The top losing sectoral indices on the BSE were INFRA down by 1.20%, Realty down by 0.56%, PSU down by 0.55%, TECK down by 0.54%, Bankex down by 0.46%. On the flip side, Oil & Gas up by 0.07% was the lone gainer.

The top gainers on the Sensex were Tata Motors up by 2.32%, Vedanta up by 1.77%, Infosys up by 0.81%, GAIL India up by 0.49% and ITC up by 0.46%. On the flip side, Cipla down by 2.35%, HDFC down by 2.16%, Mahindra & Mahindra down by 2.04%, Tata Power down by 1.92% and ONGC down by 1.60% were the top losers.

Meanwhile, in good news for fertilizer industry, Union Minister for Chemicals and Fertilizers, Anant Kumar, asserted that the country would become self-reliant in urea and fertilizer in next four years. The minister also unveiled the plans of turning the country from current urea import country to one which will be an export focused country. He also emphasized upon government’s decision of not hiking urea price hike for the next four years, according to the new urea policy.

However, listing out various steps taken by the NDA government in last one year, Minister highlighted numbers of efforts were taken by the Prime Minister to reopen all closed urea and fertiliser plants in the country, including those in Sindri (Jharkhand) and Barauni (Bihar) and further reiterated the target of producing 70 lakh metric tonnes of urea in the country and steps to open plants in Assam, Telangana, Odisha and other parts of the country.

Ananth highlighted government’s decision to add 200 million tonnes of steel production in the next 10 years to the current output of 100 million tonnes and also took a note of government’s plans of to start four new steel plants of 3-million tonne capacity in Karnataka, Odisha, Bengal and Chhattisgarh with an investment of Rs 240,000 crore.

The CNX Nifty is currently trading at 8294.40, down by 40.20 points or 0.48% after trading in a range of 8293.05 and 8364.50. There were 14 stocks advancing against 36 stocks declining on the index.

The top gainers on Nifty were Tata Motors up by 2.56%, Vedanta up by 2.01%, BPCL up by 1.18%, ACC up by 1.12% and Infosys up by 0.81%. On the flip side, Idea Cellular down by 2.79%, Cipla down by 2.46%, HDFC down by 2.29%, HCL Tech. down by 2.07% and ONGC down by 2.05% were the top losers.

Asian markets were trading mixed; with FTSE Bursa Malaysia KLCI trading higher by 0.25 points or 0.01% to 1,755.30; KOSPI Index trading higher by 3.39 points or 0.16% to 2,110.89; Taiwan Weighted trading higher by 19.3 points or 0.2% to 9,712.84; Nikkei 225 trading higher by 78.88 points or 0.39% to 20,551.46

On the flip side, Hang Seng trading lower by 555.39 points or 1.98% to 27,525.82; Shanghai Composite trading lower by 157.97 points or 3.2% to 4,783.74; Straits Times trading lower by 10.66 points or 0.31% to 3,414.28 and Jakarta Composite trading lower by 1.04 points or 0.02% to 5,252.34.