Markets hover near day’s high in late morning session

Indian equity benchmarks maintained their initial gains in late morning session to hover near day’s high on the back of buying in Realty, Oil & Gas and PSU stocks amid firm Asian markets. Traders remained optimistic with report that Direct Tax collections in the first five months of the current fiscal grew 17.5 per cent to Rs 2.24 lakh crore, mainly on account of income tax mop-up from individuals. Besides, Former Reserve Bank of India (RBI) governor Raghuram Rajan’s statement that reviving stalled projects and a thrust on infrastructure will be the key to India reaching the 8% economic growth in the short-term, also contributed to the gains. Banking stocks kept buzzing, despite the rating agency Fitch’s latest report stating that Indian banks might face $65 billion capital shortage by FY19. However, the ratings agency has reduced its capital requirement estimate to $65 billion from its earlier assessment of $90 billion.

On the global front, Asian markets were trading in green, following a firm lead from Wall Street as concerns faded over the potential damage of Hurricane Irma and as Korean Peninsula tensions took a backseat. Back home, in scrip specific development, Confidence Petroleum India hit upper circuit after the company commissioned new LPG Bottling Plant at Uluberia situated at Village Islampur, near Kolkata (West Bengal) and started providing bottling assistance to HPCL against their tender for Five Years at 24000 MT per annum.

The BSE Sensex is currently trading at 32052.44, up by 170.28 points or 0.53% after trading in a range of 31950.24 and 32075.15. There were 22 stocks advancing against 9 stocks declining on the index.

The broader indices were trading in green; the BSE Mid cap index was up by 0.71%, while Small cap index was up by 0.84%.

The top gaining sectoral indices on the BSE were Realty up by 1.76%, Oil & Gas up by 1.09%, PSU up by 1.01%, Basic Materials up by 0.96% and Metal up by 0.88%, while Telecom down by 0.10% was the only losing index on BSE.

The top gainers on the Sensex were Tata Steel up by 3.39%, Sun Pharma up by 1.86%, SBI up by 1.61%, Hindustan Unilever up by 1.49% and Axis Bank up by 1.39%. On the flip side, Wipro down by 0.83%, Coal India down by 0.74%, ONGC down by 0.70%, NTPC down by 0.35% and Bajaj Auto down by 0.15% were the top losers.

Meanwhile, Former Reserve Bank of India (RBI) governor Raghuram Rajan has said that reviving stalled projects and a thrust on infrastructure will be the key to India reaching the 8% economic growth in the short-term. He added that India should focus on removing the bottlenecks on all stalled projects in order to achieve 8-9% growth.

According to Rajan, the biggest problem is the land acquisition, which requires multiple permissions from different departments; these difficulties should be ironed out. He also suggested need to maintain the record of income-tax investigation officers, so can have the effectiveness.

He further said that power distribution companies and the export sector are other major areas of concern. He added that India needs to examine why our infra projects are going so slow and the process of trying to implement the grand infra projects should de-bottle neck those projects. He said, we need to work more on skill developments and create more infrastructure.

The CNX Nifty is currently trading at 10055.50, up by 49.45 points or 0.49% after trading in a range of 10028.05 and 10060.30. There were 36 stocks advancing against 15 stocks declining on the index.

The top gainers on Nifty were Bank of Baroda up by 3.56%, Tata Steel up by 3.21%, BPCL up by 2.89%, Sun Pharma up by 2.46% and Zee Entertainment up by 2.46%. On the flip side, Indusind Bank down by 2.62%, Tech Mahindra down by 1.10%, Coal India down by 0.80%, Wipro down by 0.76% and Bharti Infratel down by 0.58% were the top losers.

All the Asian markets were trading in green; Jakarta Composite increased 0.94 points or 0.02% to 5,872.82, FTSE Bursa Malaysia KLCI increased 2.22 points or 0.12% to 1,784.96, KOSPI Index increased 3.56 points or 0.15% to 2,362.64, Shanghai Composite increased 8.74 points or 0.26% to 3,385.16, Hang Seng increased 16.65 points or 0.06% to 27,971.78, Taiwan Weighted increased 38.19 points or 0.36% to 10,610.35 and Nikkei 225 increased 220.68 points or 1.13% to 19,766.45.