Markets continue range bound trade; PSU banks outperform

Indian markets after losing their initial lead are trying hard to keep the momentum going and are trading in a tight range trying to keep their head in green amid sluggish global cues. Though, the PSU banking stocks are still supporting the markets after Finance Minister said that the government is not yet ready to sell off its state banks, but profit booking too has emerged in some of the sectors after the last session gains and are restricting the bourses to move higher. Meanwhile, the Finance Minister Arun Jaitley stated that the top economic policy priorities for the Indian government are to pass a planned Goods and Services Tax, to revive the banking sector and get stalled infrastructure projects moving. The rupee strength too was supporting the market sentiments to some extent; the domestic currency has appreciated further to over four months high. 

The auto sectors, especially the diesel vehicle manufacturers are eyeing the National Green Tribunal (NGT), which is set to hear the diesel vehicle ban case. The tribunal had on July 18 asked the Delhi's transport authorities to cancel registration of diesel-fuelled vehicles that were older than 10 years. The telecom stocks too continued to buzz in day’s trade, as the telecom secretary has said that reducing spectrum base prices was not an option and telcos will have choices and can pick up whatever spectrum they wish to.Bharti Airtel and Idea Cellular both were down by around half a percent.

The BSE Sensex is currently trading at 28963.77, down by 14.25 points or 0.05% after trading in a range of 28928.10 and 29067.84. There were 13 stocks advancing against 17 stocks declining on the index.

The broader indices were showing a mixed trend; the BSE Mid cap index was down by 0.06%, while Small cap index up by 0.45%.

The top gaining sectoral indices on the BSE were Realty up by 1.14%, Capital Goods up by 0.61%, PSU up by 0.50%, IT up by 0.41%, FMCG up by 0.31%, while Power down by 0.65%, Oil & Gas down by 0.64%, Consumer Durables down by 0.35% were the losing indices on BSE.

The top gainers on the Sensex were SBI up by 2.97%, Larsen & Toubro up by 1.23%, Infosys up by 0.99%, Cipla up by 0.86% and ICICI Bank up by 0.79%. On the flip side, Asian Paints down by 1.95%, HDFC down by 1.68%, NTPC down by 1.16%, Axis Bank down by 1.07% and Bharti Airtel down by 0.89% were the top losers.

Road construction under the Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojana (PMGSY) has picked up pace to 139 km per day from the estimated construction speed under PMGSY of 133 kilometer (km) per day in 2016-17. Rural roads are mainly a state subject but PMGSY is a one-time special intervention of the government to provide rural connectivity by way of single all-weather road connectivity to eligible, unconnected habitations in the core network.

Rural Development Secretary, Amarjeet Sinha commenting on the development said that from 2011 to 2014, the roads in rural areas under the PMGSY were constructed at 70-75 km per day and in next two years 2014-16, it increased to 100 km per day and now roads are being constructed at 139 km per day in the first five months of the fiscal. Sinha further said the Centre has adopted green technologies such as use of waste plastic, fly ash, cold mix, jute and coir geo-textiles, copper and iron slag in the making of rural roads.

PMGSY programme foresees connecting all habitations with a population of 500 people and above as per 2001 census in plain areas and 250 people and above as per 2001 census in special category states of Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland, Sikkim, Tripura, Himachal Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir and Uttarakhand. The habitations having a population of 100 and above and identified by Home Ministry as crucial, are also covered under the scheme.

The government has also launched the second phase of PMGSY-II which envisages consolidation of the existing rural road network to improve its overall efficiency. Besides, Union Rural Development Ministry has set the target of 48,000 km road construction in this financial year as against 36,000 km road construction in fiscal year 2015-16.

The CNX Nifty is currently trading at 8930.30, down by 12.70 points or 0.14% after trading in a range of 8919.60 and 8968.70. There were 21 stocks advancing against 30 stocks declining on the index.

The top gainers on Nifty were Bank Of Baroda up by 3.13%, SBI up by 2.75%, HCL Tech. up by 1.74%, Indusind Bank up by 1.38% and Larsen & Toubro up by 1.33%. On the flip side, Tata Power down by 2.68%, Asian Paints down by 2.43%, Yes Bank down by 2.35%, BHEL down by 2.24% and HDFC down by 1.92% were the top losers.

The Asian markets were showing a mixed trend, FTSE Bursa Malaysia KLCI was tad higher by 0.67 points or 0.04% to 1,690.59, Shanghai Composite gained 1.22 points or 0.04% to 3,091.93 and Taiwan Weighted was up by 77.22 points or 0.84% to 9,259.07.

On the other hand, Hang Seng declined by 76.47 points or 0.32% to 23,711.21, Nikkei 225 was lower by 69.54 points or 0.41% to 17,012.44, KOSPI Index was down by 4.65 points or 0.23% to 2,061.88 and Jakarta Composite lost 1.97 points or 0.04% to 5,370.12