Benchmarks continue firm trade; Oil & Gas, Realty lead

Indian equity benchmarks continued their firm trade in the late afternoon session on account of buying in frontline blue chip counters. The upside however remained capped with the report that International Monetary Fund trimmed India’s growth forecast for the current and next financial years by 0.1 percentage points as it pared global growth by an identical amount. Traders were seen piling position in Oil & Gas, Realty and PSU stocks while selling was witnessed in Consumer Durables, TECK and IT sector stocks. In scrip specific development, telecom stocks like Bharti Airtel and Idea Cellular were trading in red after the department of telecommunications (DoT) began sending out notices to the country’s top six mobile operators, who have been charged by the Comptroller and Auditor General of under-reporting their adjusted gross revenue by Rs 46,045.75 crore for the period 2006-07 to 2009-10, due to which the government suffered a loss of Rs 12,488.93 crore by way of revenue share licence fee and spectrum usage charge. Jignesh Shah-promoted 63 Moon Technologies (formerly known as Financial Technologies or FTIL) was trading in red after the Mumbai Police’s Economic Offences Wing attached immovable properties worth Rs 2,000 crore of the company.

On the global front, Asian markets were trading mostly in red while the European markets were trading on optimistic note. Back home, the NSE Nifty and BSE Sensex were trading above the psychological 8,500 and 27,800 levels respectively. The market breadth on BSE was positive in the ratio of 1541:976 while 179 scrips remained unchanged.

The BSE Sensex is currently trading at 27851.44, up by 63.82 points or 0.23% after trading in a range of 27759.71 and 27910.63. 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 0.65%, while Small cap index was up by 0.69%.

The gaining sectoral indices on the BSE were Oil & Gas up by 1.74%, Realty up by 1.67%, PSU up by 1.14%, Power up by 1.11% and FMCG up by 0.50%, while Consumer Durables down by 0.23%, TECK down by 0.18% and IT down by 0.06% were the losing indices on BSE.

The top gainers on the Sensex were Coal India up by 2.52%, Dr. Reddy’s Lab up by 2.03%, GAIL India up by 2.00%, Hero MotoCorp up by 1.28% and TCS up by 1.27%.

On the flip side, Wipro down by 2.99%, ICICI Bank down by 1.08%, Tata Motors down by 1.01%, HDFC down by 0.88% and Axis Bank down by 0.75% were the top losers.

Meanwhile, the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI), the highways regulator of the country is planning to bid out 30,000 km of projects in the next 2-3 years, including several greenfield projects like Delhi-Jaipur, Lucknow-Kanpur, Hyderabad-Bengaluru and Delhi-Jammu.

The NHAI would complete the process of bidding out roads and highways worth 10,000 km by the end of current fiscal while 12,000-15,000 kms of such projects are likely to be physically completed in the next three years. In order to bid out roads and highways projects to establish suitable and perfect national connectivity, NHAI is moving faster to achieve the intended purpose with prescribed time limit. In the current fiscal alone, 10,000 km of roads and national highways projects will be awarded for physical construction.

Among others Vadodara-Mumbai Expressway project is on the anvil and the bid should be floated anytime. It is a 250-km stretch from Vadodara to Kim and would be on BOT (build, operate and transfer) basis. The Chenani-Nashri tunnel,  which at  9-km is considered to be India’s longest, will also be ready by September and cut down travel time between Jammu and Srinagar by 4.5 to 5 hours.

NHAI Chairman Raghav Chandra has said that they have already commissioned work on the Eastern Peripheral Expressway, which is 135 km long and 12,000 truckloads of earth is being taken there which we intend to take to 20,000 truckloads or 2 lakh tonnes. The government meanwhile is planning the landscaping of the highway besides fitting it with the most advanced traffic management system, electronic tolling etc

The CNX Nifty is currently trading at 8548.45, up by 19.90 points or 0.23% after trading in a range of 8512.55 and 8566.15. There were 32 stocks advancing against 19 stocks declining on the index.

The top gainers on Nifty were Aurobindo Pharma up by 3.14%, Tata Power up by 2.70%, Coal India up by 2.54%, Bosch up by 2.09% and GAIL India up by 2.06%.

On the flip side, Wipro down by 2.84%, Hindalco down by 2.46%, Zee Entertainment down by 1.25%, Tata Motors down by 1.22% and ICICI Bank down by 1.08% were the top losers.

The Asian markets were trading mostly in red; Nikkei 225 decreased 41.42 points or 0.25% to 16,681.89, Taiwan Weighted decreased 27.19 points or 0.3% to 9,007.68, Shanghai Composite decreased 8.7 points or 0.29% to 3,027.90, FTSE Bursa Malaysia KLCI decreased 2.6 points or 0.16% to 1,667.95 and KOSPI Index decreased 1.43 points or 0.07% to 2,015.46.

On the other hand, Jakarta Composite increased 49.04 points or 0.95% to 5,221.87 and Hang Seng increased 209.28 points or 0.97% to 21,882.48.

The European markets were trading in green; UK’s FTSE 100 increased 31.61 points or 0.47% to 6,728.98, Germany’s DAX increased 65.68 points or 0.66% to 10,046.92 and France’s CAC increased 28.15 points or 0.65% to 4,358.28.