Firm trade prevails in late afternoon session

Trading strength to strength, Indian equity benchmarks were at high point of day's trade in late afternoon session, as traders opted to buy beaten-down but fundamentally strong stocks amid firm global cues. The benchmark indices Sensex and Nifty reclaimed their psychological 26,200 and 8,050 levels respectively. Sentiments remained up-beat from the start of the session with Finance Minister Arun Jaitley saying that the government’s demonetisation move is going to have a positive impact on the economy, including GDP. Jaitley said there will be a positive impact because a lot of money that operates in the shadowy economy will now become part of the banking structure and banks will have a lot more money to support the economy. On the global front, European stocks were trading mostly in red due to lack of cues from the U.S. markets.

The BSE Sensex is currently trading at 26223.27, up by 363.10 points or 1.40% after trading in a range of 25874.45 and 26254.56. There were 23 stocks advancing against 7 stocks declining on the index.

The broader indices were trading in green; the BSE Mid cap index gained 1.25%, while Small cap index was up by 1.81%.

The top gaining sectoral indices on the BSE were IT up by 4.52%, TECK up by 3.68%, Power up by 1.59%, FMCG up by 1.55% and Metal up by 1.52%, while there were no losing indices on BSE sectoral front.

The top gainers on the Sensex were TCS up by 4.86%, Infosys up by 4.64%, Lupin up by 3.55%, GAIL India up by 3.40% and Wipro up by 3.28%. On the flip side, Bajaj Auto down by 0.80%, SBI down by 0.65%, ONGC down by 0.34%, Reliance Industries down by 0.27% and Hero MotoCorp down by 0.14% were the top losers.

Meanwhile, in order to protect domestic manufacturers from cheap imports, the government has imposed safeguard duty on import of hot rolled flat sheets and plates (excluding hot rolled flat products in coil form) of alloy or non-alloy steel with effect from November 23, 2016 till May 22, 2019. The Revenue Department said that the effective duty rate would be calculated after deducting the value of the goods and the anti-dumping duty payable when the import price is below $504 per tonne.

As per the government notification, a 10 percent ad valorem minus anti-dumping duty payable will be imposed on imports up to November 22, 2017 and this will be lowered to 8 percent between November 23, 2017 and November 22, 2018. It added that a 6 percent ad valorem minus anti-dumping duty payable will be imposed when imported during the period from November 23, 2018 to May 22, 2019 (both days inclusive) at an import price below $504 per tonne on CIF basis.

The Director General (Safeguard), in his final findings on August 2, 2016, had concluded that increased imports of subject goods into India has caused and threatened to cause serious injury to the domestic producers of subject goods, thereby necessitating the imposition of safeguard duty on imports of the subject goods into India. Recently, government had imposed anti-dumping duty on imports of steel wire rods from China for six months.

The CNX Nifty is currently trading at 8092.80, up by 127.30 points or 1.60% after trading in a range of 7976.75 and 8098.30. There were 43 stocks advancing against 8 stocks declining on the index.

The top gainers on Nifty were Tech Mahindra up by 5.68%, Infosys up by 5.09%, TCS up by 4.85%, Aurobindo Pharma up by 4.54% and HCL Tech. up by 4.49%. On the flip side, ACC down by 1.32%, Eicher Motors down by 1.23%, Zee Entertainment down by 0.85%, Bharti Infratel down by 0.74% and Bajaj Auto down by 0.71% were the top losers.

All the Asian markets were trading in green; FTSE Bursa Malaysia KLCI rose 2.52 points or 0.16% to 1,626.73, KOSPI Index jumped 3.2 points or 0.16% to 1,974.46, Taiwan Weighted increased 6.96 points or 0.08% to 9,159.07, Jakarta Composite climbed 7.56 points or 0.15% to 5,115.18, Shanghai Composite surged 20.2 points or 0.62% to 3,261.94, Nikkei 225 advanced 47.81 points or 0.26% to 18,381.22 and Hang Seng was up by 114.96 points or 0.51% to 22,723.45.

European markets were trading mostly in red; Germany’s DAX decreased 15.41 points or 0.14% to 10,673.85 and France’s CAC was down by 6.34 points or 0.14% to 4,536.22, while UK’s FTSE 100 increased 4.67 points or 0.07% to 6,833.87.