Indian benchmarks come off day’s high levels; Nifty holds 8,800 mark

Indian stock markets are continuing their good work and are holding on to the psychological 8,800 and 28,650 levels as optimistic investors are showing hefty buying interests across the board in the Monday noon session. Sentiments got some support with DIPP Secretary Ramesh Abhishek’s statement that implementation of the goods and services tax (GST) is bound to be a game changer for India’s manufacturing sector and will enhance ease of doing business in the country. Besides, firm global cues coupled with the appreciation in rupee value against the dollar added to the optimistic sentiments. However, investors remained cautious ahead of central bank meetings in the United States and Japan this week, while slowdown in FIIs inflows also weighed on the sentiments. Foreign portfolio investors (FPIs) pulled out Rs 1,367 crore from the domestic market in three sessions to Thursday. Meanwhile, mild selling witnessed in selected pharma stocks on the report that the government slashing prices of 10 more drugs while bringing eight new medicines, including paracetamol, under price control for the first time in its bid to cap cost of over 800 plus formulations to make them affordable. On the other hand, shares of selected textile companies were trading higher on expectation of pick- up in sales in coming months in light of good monsoon, seventh pay commission payouts and festive season.

On the global front, Asian markets were trading mostly higher on Monday as a rebound in oil bolstered risk appetite ahead of heavily-anticipated central bank policy meetings this week. With inflation numbers picking up a little bit in the US, the market will start worrying about the Fed again at some stage down the road. Further, a report from the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) highlighted that excessive credit growth in China is signaling an increasing risk of a banking crisis in the next three years.

Back home, stocks from IT, Metal and Oil & Gas counters were supporting the markets’ uptrend, while those from Realty counters were adding to the underlying cautious undertone. In scrip specific development, Petron Engineering Construction has rallied after the company received a Letter of Intents (LOIs) from Shree Cement, for civil work at their cement plants at Aurangabad, Bihar and at Gulbarga, Karnataka for a total contract value of approximately Rs 50 crore. Moreover, Vipul has surged after the company received environmental clearance for its project Aarohan at Golf Course road in Gurgaon.

The market breadth remained optimistic as there were 1411 shares on the gaining side against 989 shares on the losing side, while 158 shares remained unchanged.

The BSE Sensex is currently trading at 28693.44, up by 94.41 points or 0.33% after trading in a range of 28552.55 and 28714.77. 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 0.55%, while Small cap index up by 0.56%.

The top gaining sectoral indices on the BSE were IT up by 0.94%, Metal up by 0.89%, TECK up by 0.77%, Oil & Gas up by 0.74% and PSU up by 0.67%, while Realty down by 0.25% was the sole losing index on BSE.

The top gainers on the Sensex were TCS up by 2.05%, ICICI Bank up by 1.36%, GAIL India up by 1.18%, Adani Ports &Special up by 1.12% and Mahindra & Mahindra up by 1.11%. On the flip side, Maruti Suzuki down by 1.33%, Bajaj Auto down by 1.18%, HDFC down by 0.74%, Hero MotoCorp down by 0.67% and Axis Bank down by 0.62% were the top losers.

Meanwhile, to make medicines affordable for large section of the population, the government has reduced prices of 10 drugs and has brought 8 more under its control. Drug price regulator National Pharmaceutical Pricing Authority (NPPA) has cut prices of 10 drugs including of anti-coagulant enoxaparin and anti- epilepsy drug carbamazepine by 4.8 to 23.3 per cent. The regulator has also brought 8 new medicines like paracetamol and antibiotics like cefadroxil and cefazolin under the price control ambit for the first time.

NPPA fixed the ceiling prices of 18 more drugs in its 36th meeting held on 14th September, effectively government has now brought in 467 medicines under the price control and there are a total of around 900 drugs in the National List of Essential Medicines (NLEM) 2015.

The government currently fixes the prices of essential drugs based on the simple average of all medicines in a particular therapeutic segment, having sales of more than 1 per cent and also monitors the maximum retail prices (MRP) of all the drugs and companies are allowed to hike prices of non-scheduled drugs by up to 10 per cent in a year.

Last month, Union Minister of Chemicals and Fertilisers Ananth Kumar has said that the government is mulling providing more than 50 essential drugs, including those used in treatment of cancer and AIDS, at cheaper rates to a large section of the population. NPPA set up in 1997 has been entrusted with the task of fixation/revision of prices of pharma products, enforcement of provisions of the Drugs (Prices Control) Order and monitoring prices of controlled and decontrolled drugs.

The CNX Nifty is currently trading at 8815.35, up by 35.50 points or 0.40% after trading in a range of 8774.20 and 8822.35. There were 36 stocks advancing against 15 stocks declining on the index.

The top gainers on Nifty were TCS up by 2.21%, Tech Mahindra up by 1.55%, Indusind Bank up by 1.51%, ICICI Bank up by 1.40% and Adani Ports &Special up by 1.38%. On the flip side, Bharti Infratel down by 1.61%, Maruti Suzuki down by 1.51%, Bajaj Auto down by 0.99%, Axis Bank down by 0.87% and Tata Motors - DVR down by 0.84% were the top losers.

Asian markets were trading mostly in green; KOSPI Index increased 0.96%, Shanghai Composite gained 0.52%, Jakarta Composite jumped 0.79%, Hang Seng added 0.88% and Taiwan Weighted was up by 2.81%. On the flip side, FTSE Bursa Malaysia KLCI was down by 0.02%.