Indian bourses continue to trade under pressure

Indian bourses continued their weak trade in afternoon session, hovering near intra-day low level on account of selling witnessed in front line blue chip stocks. Both Sensex and Nifty were below their crucial 27,700 and 8,600 mark, respectively. Sentiments remained dampened with Ficci's Economic Outlook Survey indicating that Indian economy will grow 6.8 percent for the year 2016-17 due to a slowdown in the services and infrastructure sectors post demonetization. It added that this is 0.5 percentage points lower than the estimate of 7.3 percent put across in the last round. Domestic sentiments was also hit with the CII - IBA Financial Conditions Index for Q4 (January-March) FY2016-17 recording a drop below the 50 mark owing to expectation of banks and financial institutions of deterioration in the overall financial conditions in the economy. Besides, weak global cues tempered the mood. In scrip specific development, Lokesh Machines was up by over three percent on entering into technical tie-up agreement with EMCO GmbH for manufacturing and selling their machines in India.

On the global front, Asian markets were trading mostly in red, following the negative lead overnight from Wall Street as worries about the economic impact of U.S. President Donald Trump's immigration policies continued to weigh on markets.

The BSE Sensex is currently trading at 27669.48, down by 180.08 points or 0.65% after trading in a range of 27633.55 and 27867.92. There were 11 stocks advancing against 19 stocks declining on the index.

The broader indices were trading in red; the BSE Mid cap index was down by 0.71%, while Small cap index was down by 0.81%.

The sole gaining sectoral index on the BSE was FMCG up by 0.41%, while IT down by 3.54%, TECK down by 2.83%, PSU down by 0.98%, Metal down by 0.84% and Realty down by 0.78% were the losing indices on BSE.

The top gainers on the Sensex were ITC up by 1.37%, ONGC up by 1.29%, Power Grid up by 0.78%, Hindustan Unilever up by 0.57% and Reliance Industries up by 0.56%. On the flip side, TCS down by 4.61%, GAIL India down by 3.12%, Infosys down by 2.99%, Wipro down by 2.89% and Adani Ports &SEZ down by 2.80% were the top losers.

Meanwhile, Finance minister Arun Jaitley has said that payments banks will have a multiplier impact on the banking system as they will take banking operations to every doorstep in remote areas at lower cost. Jaitley said that the pattern in which the payments bank is being formed, the overhead cost is very less because the existing structure is being used and added that payment banks will not have any geographical limitations. The telecom company stores will run as payments banks, the post office in the country will turn into bank branches.

Jaitley launched the pilot services of India Post Payments Bank (IPPB) at Raipur and Ranchi and said that IPPB will expand operations to 650 districts by September. Jaitley said that IPPB and India Post will work in tandem to deliver benefits of government schemes. Further he said that the demand for a brick and mortar bank branches in far flung villages will get reduced as the services of lakhs of postmen gets converted into banking operations with the launch of IPPB.

To meet government’s financial inclusion target, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has come with a new concept of payments bank which will accept deposits of up to Rs 1lakh per account from individuals and small businesses. This new model of banking allows mobile firms, supermarket chains and others to cater to banking requirements of individuals and small businesses and will confine its activities to acceptance of deposits, remittance services, internet banking and other specified services.

The CNX Nifty is currently trading at 8565.75, down by 67.00 points or 0.78% after trading in a range of 8555.15 and 8631.75. There were 16 stocks advancing against 35 stocks declining on the index.

The top gainers on Nifty were Idea Cellular up by 17.71%, ITC up by 1.39%, ONGC up by 1.26%, Tata Power up by 0.99% and Bharti Airtel up by 0.82%. On the flip side, Bharti Infratel down by 11.71%, HCL Tech. down by 4.79%, TCS down by 4.67%, Grasim Industries down by 4.59% and Tech Mahindra down by 4.28% were the top losers.

Asian markets were trading mostly in red; Nikkei 225 decreased 327.51 points or 1.69% to 19,041.34, KOSPI Index declined 16.02 points or 0.77% to 2,067.57 and FTSE Bursa Malaysia KLCI was down by 10.65 points or 0.63% to 1,675.71. On the flip side, Jakarta Composite increased 4.15 points or 0.08% to 5,306.81.