Benchmarks continue firm trade; Realty, Banking lead

Indian equity benchmarks continued the firm trade in the late afternoon session on account of buying in frontline blue chip stocks. The sentiments remained optimistic and strong buying interest emerged in rate sensitive stocks on hopes of a rate cut from the RBI governor Raghuram Rajan. The sentiment also got a push on reports that Foreign Institutional Investors bought shares worth Rs 1,760.98 crore and domestic institutional investors purchased shares worth Rs 317 crore on Tuesday. The rupee appreciated further and rose to over a three-week high of 67.68 against the US currency on sustained bouts of dollar selling from banks and exporters amid firm domestic equities, too providing some upside support. Traders were seen piling up position in Realty, Banking and PSU stocks, while selling was witnessed in Consumer Durables and FMCG sector stocks. Hectic buying activity was witnessed in banking shares mainly Public Sector Undertakings (PSUs) after the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) allowed banks to beef up its capital adequacy by including certain items such as property value, foreign exchange for calculation of its Tier-I capital.

In scrip specific development, Inox Wind was trading in green after the company bagged an order to set up a 20 MW wind power project in Madhya Pradesh. On the global front, the Asian markets were trading in green, while the European markets were trading on optimistic note. Back home, the NSE Nifty and BSE Sensex were trading above the psychological 7,350 and 24,200 levels respectively. The market breadth on BSE was positive in the ratio of 1885:620, while 128 scrips remained unchanged.

The BSE Sensex is currently trading at 24203.26, up by 423.91 points or 1.78% after trading in a range of 24043.89 and 24251.36. There were 24 stocks advancing against 6 stocks declining on the index.

The broader indices were trading in green; the BSE Mid cap index was up by 1.84%, while Small cap index was up by 2.18%.

The top gaining sectoral indices on the BSE were Realty up by 5.27%, Bankex up by 4.24%, PSU up by 2.68%, Power up by 2.34%, IT up by 2.08%, while Consumer Durables down by 0.04%, FMCG down by 0.01% were the losing indices on BSE.

The top gainers on the Sensex were SBI up by 9.03%, Adani Ports & Special Economic Zone up by 6.00%, ICICI Bank up by 5.75%, BHEL up by 5.61% and Hero MotoCorp up by 5.51%.

On the flip side, Mahindra & Mahindra down by 4.26%, ITC down by 1.63%, Bajaj Auto down by 1.44%, Coal India down by 0.94% and Sun Pharma down by 0.46% were the top losers.

Meanwhile, after finance minister Arun Jaitley's announcement during Budget speech that the government will abolish 13 cesses across ministries where collection is less than Rs 50 crore, the labour ministry has identified four of the six cesses levied to promote workers' welfare including the cesses on mining of iron ore, manganese ore, limestone and dolomite, and chrome ore. However, the cess on beedi workers as well as construction cess under the Building & Other Construction Workers Act will continue.  This move could spell to give relief for both the taxpayers and tax collectors but is not unlikely to go down well with trade unions, which are up in arms against some of the recent decisions of the government, calling them pro-corporate.

In the year 2015-16, the combined collected from iron ore, manganese ore and chrome ore mining stood at Rs 16.7 crore compared with Rs 15.14 crore in the previous fiscal. Besides, the annual revenue from cess on limestone and dolomite stood at Rs 15.98 crore in the same period as against Rs 14.46 crore in the previous fiscal.

Cess was levied at the rate of Rs 1 per metric tonne on iron ore, Rs 4 per metric tonne on manganese ore and Rs 6 per metric tonne on chrome ore under the Iron Ore Mines, Manganese Ore Mines and Chrome Ore Mines Labour Welfare Cess Act, 1976.  Similarly, cess on limestone and dolomite was levied at Rs 1 per metric tonne under the Limestone and Dolomite Mines Labour Welfare Fund Act, 1972.

The CNX Nifty is currently trading at 7354.55, up by 132.25 points or 1.83% after trading in a range of 7308.15 and 7377.75. There were 42 stocks advancing against 8 stocks declining on the index.

The top gainers on Nifty were SBI up by 9.19%, Bank of Baroda up by 6.73%, Hindalco up by 5.98%, ICICI Bank up by 5.81% and Tech Mahindra up by 5.70%.

On the flip side, Mahindra & Mahindra down by 4.46%, ITC down by 1.74%, Bajaj Auto down by 1.48%, Coal India down by 0.94% and Sun Pharma down by 0.56% were the top losers.

The Asian markets were trading in green; FTSE Bursa Malaysia KLCI increased 14.24 points or 0.85% to 1,685.06, KOSPI Index increased 30.76 points or 1.6% to 1,947.42, Jakarta Composite increased 48.36 points or 1.01% to 4,828.35, Taiwan Weighted increased 58.36 points or 0.69% to 8,544.05, Shanghai Composite increased 116.51 points or 4.26% to 2,849.68, Hang Seng increased 596.03 points or 3.07% to 20,003.49 and Nikkei 225 increased 661.04 points or 4.11% to 16,746.55.

The European markets were trading in green; UK’s FTSE 100 increased 31.9 points or 0.52% to 6,184.78, France’s CAC increased 25.5 points or 0.58% to 4,432.34 and Germany’s DAX increased 58.41 points or 0.6% to 9,775.57.