Benchmarks continue to trade in green in late morning session

After getting a gap-up start, Indian benchmark indices continued to trade in fine fettle in late morning deals on the back of value-buying by retail investors in recently beaten-down stocks. Sentiments got a boost with report that India is considering setting up an independent panel to help state-owned banks negotiate settlements with big businesses on bad loans, in order to shield bankers from a populist backlash they say is hobbling efforts to clean up their balance sheets. Bad debt has hampered banks' ability to lend, threatening to throttle a nascent economic recovery. Some support also came with the Science and Technology Minister Harsh Vardhan’s statement that the Monsoon is expected to hit Kerala by May-end or early June, with various forecasting agencies predicting normal or above normal rainfall this year. However, investors remained cautious with a private report stating that India's GDP is likely to 'auto correct', and the headline growth of the country in this fiscal is expected to remain flat at 7.4 per cent. According to the report, India's new GDP series seem to exaggerate the economy's true growth rate and this overestimation is likely to narrow over the next few quarters.

On the global front, most of the Asian markets were trading lower on Thursday after a mixed set of US economic data failed to enthuse the investors. US services sector expanded in April as new orders and employment advanced, while the ADP private sector employment report indicated that hiring for the month of April touched its lowest in three years. Further, China stocks dipped, with trading volume continuing to dwindle amid fresh signs that the country’s nascent economic recovery is resting on weak foundations.  Back home, stocks from Realty, Auto and Capital Goods counters were supporting the markets’ uptrend, while those from Oil & Gas, TECK and information technology (IT) counters were adding to the underlying cautious undertone. In scrip specific development, shares of V-Guard Industries have surged after the company's net profit more than doubled to Rs 42 crore for the quarter ended March 31, 2016 (Q4FY16), on back of strong revenue growth. On the flip side, Hexaware Technologies slumped after the mid-sized IT services firm announced lower-than-expected results for quarter ended March 2016.

The market breadth on BSE was positive, out of 2104 stocks traded, 1091 stocks advanced, while 910 stocks declined on the BSE. 

The BSE Sensex is currently trading at 25192.50, up by 90.77 points or 0.36% after trading in a range of 25162.94 and 25265.49. There were 19 stocks advancing against 11 stocks declining on the index.

The broader indices were trading in green; the BSE Mid cap index was up by 0.03%, while Small cap index up by 0.20%.

The top gaining sectoral indices on the BSE were Realty up by 1.23%, Auto up by 0.61%, Capital Goods up by 0.55%, Power up by 0.41% and FMCG up by 0.38%, while Oil & Gas down by 0.62%, TECK down by 0.46%, IT down by 0.32%, Consumer Durables down by 0.27% and PSU down by 0.27% were the top losing indices on BSE.

The top gainers on the Sensex were Tata Motors up by 2.70%, HDFC up by 2.37%, Lupin up by 1.62%, Sun Pharma up by 1.28% and BHEL up by 0.96%. On the flip side, Adani Ports &Special down by 3.01%, Infosys down by 0.59%, Bharti Airtel down by 0.47%, Asian Paints down by 0.35% and TCS down by 0.27% were the top losers.

Meanwhile, Telecom Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad has said that the number of Internet users in the country is likely to reach 500 million this year from around 400 million Internet users now. He added that India has now over 100 crore mobile subscribers. The total mobile subscriber base at the end of February has 98.2 crore GSM mobile users and 4.45 crore subscribers on CDMA network.

Prasad while launching Digital Desh Drive 2 said that people in India specially at grass root levels are using technology to transform their lives. The Digital Desh 2.0 has incorporated insights of small Indian businesses who are using Internet to transform their businesses.

Earlier Prasad had said that the government is setting up a centralised monitoring system (CMS) to automate process of lawful interception and monitoring of phones and internet. The aim and objective of CMS include electronic provisioning of target number by government agency without any manual intervention from telecom service providers (TSPs) on a secured network, thus enhancing the secrecy level and quick provisioning of target.

The CNX Nifty is currently trading at 7720.00, up by 13.45 points or 0.17% after trading in a range of 7714.60 and 7743.50. There were 26 stocks advancing against 25 stocks declining on the index.

The top gainers on Nifty were Tata Motors up by 2.58%, HDFC up by 2.44%, Lupin up by 1.55%, Tata Motors - DVR up by 1.30% and Sun Pharma up by 1.16%. On the flip side, Idea Cellular down by 4.38%, Adani Ports &Special down by 3.53%, BPCL down by 1.69%, Zee Entertainment down by 1.59% and ACC down by 1.26% were the top losers.

Asian markets were trading mostly in red, Hang Seng was down by 0.3%, FTSE Bursa Malaysia KLCI was down 0.49% and Shanghai Composite was down by 0.09%. On the other hand, Taiwan Weighted was up by 0.65%.