Benchmarks trade near neutral line in late afternoon session

Indian equity benchmarks pared most of their gains to trade flat with positive bias in late afternoon session due to heavy selling in Realty, Telecom, Healthcare and Power stocks. Market participants reminded cautious as ratings agency Moody's kept India's gross domestic product (GDP) forecast for FY17 at 6.9% and expects the full impact of demonetisation to reflect in the fourth quarter numbers. The ratings agency expects Q4 GDP to moderate to 6.4%. However, some support came in with Finance Minister Arun Jaitley’s statement that the Q3 GDP data was substantially impacted by demonetization, adding that Indian economic growth is likely to pick up further in coming quarters and that GDP number belies exaggerated claim by many that rural sector was in distress.

On global front, European markets were trading mixed as investors took a breather after a strong rally on Wall Street and focused on earnings and political instability. Asian markets were trading in green tracking the strong gains overnight on Wall Street after U.S. President Donald Trump's address to a joint session of Congress. Back home, in scrip specific development, BL Kashyap & Sons traded higher after the company secured new orders worth approximately Rs 431 crore.

The BSE Sensex is currently trading at 29003.64, up by 19.15 points or 0.07% after trading in a range of 28984.07 and 29145.62. There were 15 stocks advancing against 14 stocks declining on the index, while 1 stock remained unchanged.

The broader indices were trading in red; the BSE Mid cap index was down by 0.70%, while Small cap index was down by 0.72%.

The top gaining sectoral indices on the BSE were Auto up by 0.82%, Industrials up by 0.45%, Capital Goods up by 0.40%, Metal up by 0.18% and IT up by 0.11%, while Realty down by 2.88%, Telecom down by 1.41%, Healthcare down by 0.93%, Utilities down by 0.89% and Power down by 0.88% were the top losing indices on BSE.
The top gainers on the Sensex were Tata Motors up by 3.16%, Bajaj Auto up by 2.02%, Hero MotoCorp up by 1.65%, Wipro up by 1.06% and Larsen & Toubro up by 0.99%. On the flip side, Sun Pharma down by 2.28%, Bharti Airtel down by 1.75%, Dr. Reddy’s Lab down by 1.48%, NTPC down by 1.44% and Adani Ports & Special Economic Zone down by 1.32% were the top losers.

Meanwhile, amid the talks of India adopting 5G technology, which in present form can deliver up to 1000 mbps download speed, from this year, Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) chairman R S Sharma has said that India must make the most from the diverse applications under the upcoming 5G technology to solve some of its developmental problems in areas such as transport and agriculture.

5G is the next-generation mobile network which is expected to boost range and speed that the current 4G and 3G couldn’t cope to deliver. Telecom secretary J S Deepak had earlier said that India lagged behind in adoption of 3G and 4G but it wants to catch with the world for 5G technology.

Trai chief has suggested opting 5G technology as soon as possible, saying that “It's a fantastic technology and may help the government to solve some of its developmental problems in areas such as transport and agriculture”. He also said that 5G is an exciting area where application domains are going to be hugely diverse.

Mentioning use of 5G in various domains like transport, smart cities, agriculture and irrigation, Sharma pointed that individual domains must come ahead and explore the application scenarios of it. Further, he mentioned that the 2G/3G/4G applications are communication applications but 5G involves a use of technology in areas not traditionally connected with the communication system.

The CNX Nifty is currently trading at 8946.20, up by 0.40 points after trading in a range of 8938.30 and 8992.50. There were 24 stocks advancing against 27 stocks declining on the index.

The top gainers on Nifty were Tata Motors up by 3.22%, Tata Motors - DVR up by 3.19%, Ultratech Cement up by 2.81%, Bajaj Auto up by 2.13% and Hero MotoCorp up by 1.97%. On the flip side, Idea Cellular down by 2.74%, BPCL down by 2.36%, Sun Pharma down by 2.34%, Bharti Airtel down by 1.96% and Yes Bank down by 1.51% were the top losers.

Asian markets were trading mostly in green; KOSPI Index increased 11.01 points or 0.53% to 2,102.65, Taiwan Weighted increased 17.02 points or 0.18% to 9,691.80, FTSE Bursa Malaysia KLCI increased 18.47 points or 1.09% to 1,716.16, Jakarta Composite increased 57.03 points or 1.06% to 5,420.09 and Nikkei 225 increased 171.26 points or 0.88% to 19,564.80. On the flip side, Hang Seng decreased 48.42 points or 0.2% to 23,728.07 and Shanghai Composite decreased 16.9 points or 0.52% to 3,230.03.

European Markets were trading mixed; France’s CAC increased 1.71 points or 0.03% to 4,962.54 and UK’s FTSE 100 increased 6.7 points or 0.09% to 7,389.60. On the flip side, Germany’s DAX decreased 17.85 points or 0.15% to 12,049.34.