Benchmarks continue firm trade; Metal, Bankex lead

Indian equity benchmarks continued their firm trade in the late afternoon session on account of buying in front line blue chip counters. The sentiments were on firm note from early trade after global ratings agency CRISIL stated that India’s economy will grow at 7.9% in the current financial year compared with 7.6% in fiscal 2016, if the country receives normal monsoon as it will boost agriculture growth and lift rural demand and if the global situation does not worsen further. Meanwhile, the India Meteorological Department (IMD) reported that monsoon rains will cover the whole of India in the next 48 hours boosting hopes of a rise in farm output and incomes after two straight years of drought. Traders were seen piling position in Metal, Bankex and Consumer Durables stocks while selling was witnessed in Power, FMCG and Capital Goods sector stocks. In scrip specific development, Quess Corp was trading firm after making bumper debut at around 58 percent higher from its issue price of Rs 317 per share. The IPO oversubscribed 145 times, raised Rs 400 crore for the company. Rico Auto was trading in green after the company announced that it had laid the foundation stone for a new manufacturing plant at Pathredi, Bhiwadi (Rajasthan) for the manufacturing of auto components on July 07, 2016. Shriram EPC was trading in green after the company’s board approved the conversion of Rs 1,280 crore working capital loan into equity shares as part of corporate debt restructuring package.

On the global front, Asian markets were trading mostly in green while the European markets were trading on optimistic note. Back home, the NSE Nifty and BSE Sensex were trading above the psychological 8,450 and 27,700 levels respectively. The market breadth on BSE was negative in the ratio of 1093:1540 while 155 scrips remained unchanged.

The BSE Sensex is currently trading at 27731.29, up by 104.60 points or 0.38% after trading in a range of 27667.81 and 27761.18. There were 20 stocks advancing against 10 stocks declining on the index.

The broader indices were trading mixed; the BSE Mid cap index was up by 0.30%, while Small cap index was down by 0.11%.

The gaining sectoral indices on the BSE were Metal up by 1.56%, Bankex up by 1.14%, Consumer Durables up by 0.73%, Oil & Gas up by 0.67% and Realty up by 0.51% while, Power down by 0.26%, FMCG down by 0.23%, Capital Goods down by 0.17%, IT down by 0.16% and TECK down by 0.08% were the losing indices on BSE.

The top gainers on the Sensex were ICICI Bank up by 3.00%, Tata Steel up by 2.75%, Maruti Suzuki up by 2.32%, Axis Bank up by 2.18% and ONGC up by 1.29%.

On the flip side, Coal India down by 1.26%, Cipla down by 0.98%, Dr. Reddy’s Lab down by 0.96%, Hindustan Unilever down by 0.83% and Sun Pharma down by 0.75% were the top losers.

Meanwhile, the Finance Ministry may finalise this week the proposal for the first round of capital infusion in select public sector banks (PSBs) and the approval for the same is expected from the Finance Minister. The government has made Budget provision of Rs 25,000 crore capital infusion in PSBs for the current fiscal. Besides, Rs 10,000 crore each would be infused in 2017-18 and 2018-19, while the Finance Minister Arun Jaitley has assured that the government will provide more funds if needed.

The Department of Financial Services has finalised the first tranche of fund infusion, as after the fourth quarter results, each bank made a detailed request taking into account issues pertaining to non- performing assets (NPAs) or bad loans and growth projections.

Last year, the government announced a revamp plan ‘Indradhanush’ to infuse Rs 70,000 crore in state-owned banks over four years, while they will have to raise a further Rs 1.1 lakh crore from the markets to meet their capital requirements in line with global risk norms Basel-III. Further, during the last fiscal, 21 PSBs got fund support of Rs 25,000 crore. Of this, SBI got the highest amount of Rs 5,393 crore followed by Bank of India at Rs 2,455 crore, IDBI Bank Rs 2,229 crore, Indian Overseas Bank Rs 2,009 crore and Punjab National Bank Rs 1,732 crore.

The CNX Nifty is currently trading at 8495.20, up by 27.30 points or 0.32% after trading in a range of 8479.20 and 8505.20. There were 28 stocks advancing against 23 stocks declining on the index.

The top gainers on Nifty were Hindalco up by 4.26%, ICICI Bank up by 2.86%, Tata Steel up by 2.55%, Maruti Suzuki up by 2.33% and Axis Bank up by 1.97%.

On the flip side, BHEL down by 1.65%, Tata Power down by 1.56%, Coal India down by 1.39%, Cipla down by 1.27% and Dr. Reddy’s Lab down by 1.23% were the top losers.

The Asian markets were trading mostly in green; KOSPI Index increased 2.69 points or 0.14% to 1,991.23, Jakarta Composite increased 28.43 points or 0.56% to 5,097.45, Shanghai Composite increased 54.46 points or 1.82% to 3,049.38, Taiwan Weighted increased 54.99 points or 0.63% to 8,841.46, Hang Seng increased 344.24 points or 1.65% to 21,224.74 and Nikkei 225 increased 386.83 points or 2.46% to 16,095.65.

On the other hand, FTSE Bursa Malaysia KLCI decreased 3.65 points or 0.22% to 1,650.22.

The European market were trading in green; UK’s FTSE 100 increased 5.1 points or 0.08% to 6,687.96, France’s CAC increased 45.89 points or 1.08% to 4,310.42 and Germany’s DAX increased 113.92 points or 1.16% to 9,947.33.