Massacre continues on Dalal Street in late morning deals

Indian equity benchmarks continued to witness blood-bath in late morning session, tracking weak cues from regional counterparts as the initial euphoria post Donald Trump’s victory in the US elections faded. Traders failed to get any sense of relief with the report that Reserve Bank of India (RBI) in a step to address corporate stress, making sweeping changes to existing loan recast schemes, it has given lenders additional time up to 180 days for hammering out a restructuring package under the scheme for sustainable structuring of stressed asset (S4A). Previously, the time limit was 90 days. Weakness in regional counters too dampened sentiments. Asian markets were trading mostly in red terrain at this point of time, as oil prices eased on skepticism regarding OPEC's ability to rebalance crude supply and US bond yields soared on expectations that Trump will increase fiscal spending. Back home, stocks related to real estate and jewellery counters continued to reel under selling pressure on Friday, three days after the government demonetised Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes in a bid to curb black money circulation in the economy.

The BSE Sensex is currently trading at 27141.25, down by 376.43 points or 1.37% after trading in a range of 27079.46 and 27344.85. There were 3 stocks advancing against 27 stocks declining on the index.

The broader indices were trading in red; the BSE Mid cap index declined 2.50%, while Small cap index was down by 2.01%.

The top losing sectoral indices on the BSE were Consumer Durables down by 4.00%, Realty down by 3.80%, Telecom down by 2.85% and Auto down by 2.36%, while there were no gainers on the BSE sectoral front.

The top gainers on the Sensex were Sun Pharma up by 5.02%, SBI up by 0.18% and HDFC Bank up by 0.13%. On the flip side, Asian Paints down by 3.68%, Hero MotoCorp down by 3.55%, GAIL India down by 3.49%, ICICI Bank down by 3.26% and HDFC down by 3.20% were the top losers.

Meanwhile, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley has said that the Government is making all efforts to build consensus on sticky issues, especially on jurisdiction of assesses, to introduce Goods and Services Tax (GST) from April 1, 2017 and he also said that government has also covered a lot of distance for its implementation. He further said that GST has to be implemented latest by September 16, 2017 and if it is not implemented then states will not be able to collect their share of taxes and hence there is not enough scope to further delay the decision.

Jaitley said that they have already sorted out 10 issues and the issue of dual control has still not been sorted out. He said that this issue of dual control, which deals with who will control which set of assesses under GST, has been holding back the negotiations. He said that only last stages of decision making are remaining and he hoped that GST Council will be able to resolve it through a larger consensus. Finance Minister and his state counterparts will meet on November 20 to work out a ‘political solution’ on the issue and the GST Council will formally take up the issue on November 24-25.

Earlier, the all powerful GST Council had decided a four-tier rate structure of 5, 12, 18 and 28 percent, with a cess over and above the peak rate for luxury and demerit goods. Recently, the government had launched new and simpler GST portal for migrating tax payers. Further, as per the GST Constitution Amendment Bill, which was notified on September 17, 2016, the government is required to complete the process of implementation of GST within a year.

The CNX Nifty is currently trading at 8393.15, down by 132.60 points or 1.56% after trading in a range of 8372.80 and 8460.60. There were 6 stocks advancing against 45 stocks declining on the index.

The top gainers on Nifty were Sun Pharma up by 5.21%, Bank of Baroda up by 0.82%, BHEL up by 0.36%, Hindalco up by 0.23% and SBI up by 0.16%. On the flip side, Bharti Infratel down by 5.10%, Ultratech Cement down by 4.97%, HCL Tech. down by 3.92%, Ambuja Cement down by 3.79% and Eicher Motors down by 3.69% were the top losers.

Asian markets were trading mostly in red; Hang Seng decreased 249.19 points or 1.09% to 22,589.92, Taiwan Weighted declined 185.93 points or 2.03% to 8,966.25, Jakarta Composite dropped 160.99 points or 2.95% to 5,289.32, FTSE Bursa Malaysia KLCI shed 16.25 points or 0.98% to 1,636.49 and KOSPI Index was down by 13.19 points or 0.66% to 1,989.41.

On the flip side, Shanghai Composite increased 24.49 points or 0.77% to 3,195.77 and Nikkei 225 was up by 45.55 points or 0.26% to 17,389.97.