Positive trade continues on street; Sensex up by 146 points

Maintaining the gaining trajectory in tandem with global markets, Indian equity benchmarks continued to trade higher in late morning session on the back of strong buying in Telecom, Realty and Healthcare stocks. Investors remained optimistic with NITI Aayog Vice Chairman Arvind Panagariya’s statement that the country’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) could touch $8 trillion over the coming 15 years by maintaining 8 percent growth annually. Some support also came with Union IT Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad’s statement India’s digital economy is going to be $1 trillion in the next 5-7 years from the current size of $400 billion. Furthermore, the broader markets continued to outperform benchmarks, with the BSE Midcap and Smallcap indices rising close to a percent each. Meanwhile, markets regulator Sebi has asked listed banks to make additional disclosure on divergence in asset classification and provisioning to stock exchanges in a prescribed format.

On the global front, Asian markets were trading in green as the dollar nursed losses after it hit 10-month lows overnight on dimmed prospects for U.S. health care reforms. Back home, in scrip specific development, JM Financial traded higher after its subsidiary - JM Financial Products completed the first leg of acquisition of 24,35,286 equity shares of Spandana Sphoorty Financial.

The BSE Sensex is currently trading at 31857.41, up by 146.42 points or 0.46% after trading in a range of 31793.72 and 31885.17. There were 24 stocks advancing against 6 stocks declining on the index, while 1 stock remained unchanged.

The broader indices were trading in green; the BSE Mid cap index was up by 0.69%, while Small cap index gained 0.90%.

The top gaining sectoral indices on the BSE were Telecom up by 1.95%, Realty up by 1.72%, Healthcare up by 1.56%, Metal up by 1.35% and Utilities up by 1.12%, while there were no losing indices on BSE.

The top gainers on the Sensex were Bharti Airtel up by 2.50%, NTPC up by 1.92%, Sun Pharma Inds. up by 1.51%, ITC up by 1.37% and Dr. Reddy’s Lab up by 1.34%. On the flip side, Infosys down by 1.24%, Bajaj Auto down by 0.69%, Hero MotoCorp down by 0.52%, ONGC down by 0.40% and Adani Ports & SEZ down by 0.14% were the top losers.

Meanwhile, expressing optimism over growth of Indian economy, NITI Aayog Vice Chairman Arvind Panagariya has said the country’s gross domestic product (GDP) could touch $8 trillion over the coming 15 years by maintaining 8 percent growth annually. With the current level of growth, he noted that living standards and amenities that are taken for granted by Western countries could become available to a very large part of the Indian population in the next 15 years.

Panagariya stated that today, India has left China behind in the race to the world's fastest growing economy and it grew in real dollars in the previous 15 years ending 2016-17 (at) about 9 percent. Adding further, he said that if one were to make a very conservative assumption that over the next 15 years, India would grow 8 percent, GDP would increase from 2.3 trillion dollars today to close to about $8 trillion, with an average income of over $5,000. He also clarified that at that level of income it is not simply that the country will be very close to ending mass poverty entirely but a large part of the population will be very prosperous.

He further said that currently, the Indian economy is experiencing much more stable growth and added that there are some of the legacy issues such as the non- performing assets of the banks and they are being tackled by the government. He added that inflation is down to below two percent and the government has systematically cut the fiscal deficits. Highlighting government’s various reforms initiatives such as the Goods and Services Tax (GST), Insolvency and Bankruptcy Act and the Aadhar Act, Panagariya said that the benefits of those reforms are just starting to show.

The CNX Nifty is currently trading at 9871.35, up by 44.20 points or 0.45% after trading in a range of 9851.65 and 9877.30. There were 38 stocks advancing against 13 stocks declining on the index.

The top gainers on Nifty were Aurobindo Pharma up by 5.46%, Zee Entertainment up by 3.06%, Hindalco up by 2.46%, Bharti Airtel up by 2.41% and Eicher Motors up by 1.77%. On the flip side, Ultratech Cement down by 1.81%, ACC down by 1.40%, Infosys down by 1.27%, Bajaj Auto down by 0.77% and Ambuja Cement down by 0.62% were the top losers.

Asian markets were trading mostly in green; FTSE Bursa Malaysia KLCI increased 2.74 points or 0.16% to 1,757.66, Nikkei 225 increased 5.19 points or 0.03% to 20,005.10, Taiwan Weighted increased 20.73 points or 0.2% to 10,501.99, Shanghai Composite increased 22.81 points or 0.72% to 3,210.38 and Hang Seng increased 127.78 points or 0.48% to 26,652.72. On the flip side, Jakarta Composite decreased 15.93 points or 0.27% to 5,806.43 and KOSPI Index decreased 1.24 points or 0.05% to 2,424.80.