Local bourses at day’s high following firm European cues

Local bourses extended their gains in the late trade following firm trend in European markets while, positive opening in US stock futures too aided the sentiments. On the global front, Asian markets ended mostly in the green after the Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao said China will focus more on bolstering economic growth while, European counters were trading largely in the positive terrain at this point of time as investors bought into some stocks and sectors that had been particularly hard hit in the previous week's sell-off. Back home, sustained buying was visible in the capital goods, realty and banking stocks. The country’s largest lender State Bank of India moved up further, rising 4 percent after reporting better than expected net profit of Rs 4,050 crore for the fourth quarter of financial year 2011-12 as against Rs 21 crore in a year ago period. Its competitors ICICI Bank and HDFC Bank were up 1 percent and 0.5 percent, respectively. The Realty sector stocks are also witnessing the renewed buying interest. The BSE realty index is up 1.6% at 1,581. DB Realty, Anant Raj Industries, HDIL, Oberoi Realty, DLF and Prestige Estates are among the gainers. Moreover, the broader indices were going neck to neck with benchmarks. The market breadth on the BSE was positive; there were 1,632 shares on the gaining side against 913 shares on the losing side while 118 shares remained unchanged.

The BSE Sensex is currently trading at 16,286.22, up by 133.47 points or 0.83% after trading as high as 16,298.39 and as low as 16,172.05. There were 22 stocks advancing against 8 declines on the index.

The broader indices were trading in-line with benchmarks; the BSE Mid cap index was up by 0.77% and Small cap index rose 1.08%.

CG up by 2.27%, Realty up by 1.91%, Power up by 1.73%, Bankex up by 1.65% and Metal up by 1.20% were the top gainers on BSE sectoral chart.

On the flip side, IT down by 0.53%, FMCG down by 0.50% and TECk down 0.21% were the few laggards in the space.

Tata Power up 4.76%, SBI up 3.96%, Maruti Suzuki up 3.17%, Hindalco up 2.59% and L&T up 2.44% were the top gainers on the Sensex, while Wipro down 1.36%, Infosys down 1.06%, ITC down 0.90%, NTPC down 0.86% and Cipla down 0.81% were the major losers in the index.

Meanwhile, Deputy Chairman of Planning Commission, Montek Singh Ahluwalia has opined that it may be tough for India to achieve a 7.5% growth in the current fiscal but the country has the potential to grow by 8-9% for the next two decades.

The observation is based on the fact that India has achieved a near 7% growth in an uncertain global environment which reflects its underlying potential. Ahluwalia has observed that growth in the last quarter did not show robustness. Moreover inflation accelerated to 7.23% last month combined with a depreciating rupee. The high Current Account Deficit (CAD) further made matters worse. Going forward he is hopeful that the government will take tough decisions to attract foreign capital. These include raising prices of petroleum, restoring fiscal credibility and removing implementation bottlenecks from infrastructure projects.

He has stated categorically that fuel prices have to be raised and people should be educated about this as 80% of petroleum is imported, not increasing its domestic prices in accordance with global rates will only create troubles for the sector. Regarding the depreciating rupee, the deputy chairman stated that as long as the variation is not too much, we don’t need to worry about it. Its movement is the result of an uncertain global environment and the RBI has enough ‘ammunition’ to deal with it. Inflation, he feels needs to be brought down.

The S&P CNX Nifty is currently trading at 4,935.15, higher by 43.70 points or 0.89% after trading as high as 4,937.50 and as low as 4,888.50. There were 36 stocks advancing against 14 declines on the index.

The top gainers on the Nifty were Tata Power up 5.45%, Reliance Infra up 4.60%, SBI up 4.48%, JP Associates up 3.14% and Maruti Suzuki up 3.12%.

Wipro down 1.50%, Infosys down 1.11%, ITC down 1.09%, Cipla down 1.07% and ACC down 0.96% were the major losers on the index.

In the Asian space, Shanghai Composite gained 0.16%, KLSE Composite was up by 0.42%, Nikkei 225 added 0.26%, KOSPI Composite was up by 0.94%, Taiwan Weighted was trading higher by 0.57% and Straits Times has added 0.49%.

On the other hand, Hang Seng was down by 0.16% and Jakarta Composite lost 1.01%.

The European markets got off to a positive start with France’s CAC 40 surged 0.71%, Germany’s DAX added 0.60% while, United Kingdom’s FTSE dropped 0.79%.