Benchmarks trade with traction in early deals on Friday

Indian equity benchmarks, after a cautious start, gained ground and are trading with traction in early deals on Friday ahead of GDP data for the March quarter. There has been wide debate on CSOs new method of calculating GDP which had earlier said that India’s real or “inflation adjusted” GDP in 2013-14 grew 6.9 percent instead of the earlier 4.7 percent and by 5.1 percent in the year before compared to 4.5 percent in the earlier system. 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 global front, the US markets despite regaining some ground in last session ended modestly lower in last session as uncertainty about the situation in Greece continued after International Monetary Fund Managing Director Christine Lagarde acknowledged that a Greek exit from the eurozone is a 'possibility'. The Asian markets were trading mostly in the green at this point of time. The Chinese and Hong Kong markets have recovered from their last session’s fall, while the Japanese market was marginally in green too.

Back home, none of the sectoral indices were trading in the red, while healthcare and oil & gas witnessed the maximum gain in trade. Realty, capital goods, banking, technology, FMCG and software too were trading significantly. The broader indices too were trading in-line with benchmarks, while the market breadth on the BSE was positive; there were 1099 shares on the gaining side against 663 shares on the losing side while 77 shares remain unchanged.

The BSE Sensex is currently trading at 27617.63, up by 110.92 points or 0.40% after trading in a range of 27467.23 and 27639.24. There were 20 stocks advancing against 10 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 gained 0.75%.

The top gaining sectoral indices on the BSE were Healthcare up by 1.02%, Oil & Gas up by 0.92%, Realty up by 0.84%, Capital Goods up by 0.64% and Bankex up by 0.50%, while there were no losers on the index.

The top gainers on the Sensex were Bharti Airtel up by 2.09%, Coal India up by 1.59%, Sun Pharma up by 1.41%, Cipla up by 1.12% and Larsen & Toubro up by 0.83%. On the flip side, ONGC down by 1.62%, BHEL down by 1.61%, Vedanta down by 0.71%, Dr. Reddys Lab down by 0.68% and Bajaj Auto down by 0.47% were the top losers.

Meanwhile, in a 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 8354.55, up by 35.55 points or 0.43% after trading in a range of 8305.70 and 8360.90. There were 34 stocks advancing against 15 stocks declining on the index.

The top gainers on Nifty were BPCL up by 3.64%, Asian Paints up by 2.21%, Bharti Airtel up by 1.95%, Sun Pharma up by 1.58% and Yes Bank up by 1.54%. On the flip side, NMDC down by 2.78%, BHEL down by 1.86%, ONGC down by 1.56%, PNB down by 1.18% and Dr. Reddys Lab down by 0.78% were the top losers.

Asian markets were trading mostly in the green; KOSPI Index rose 5.4 points or 0.26% to 2,116.29, Taiwan Weighted gained 5.6 points or 0.06% to 9,718.44, Shanghai Composite added 5.73 points or 0.12% to 4,626.00, Nikkei 225 advanced 34.14 points or 0.17% to 20,585.60 and Hang Seng was up by 83.39 points or 0.3% to 27,537.70.

On the flip side, Straits Times decreased 19.43 points or 0.57% to 3,398.34, Jakarta Composite shed 11.28 points or 0.22% to 5,226.13 and FTSE Bursa Malaysia KLCI was down by 3.32 points or 0.19% to 1,752.24.