Bourses turn positive; Nifty reclaims 9,850 mark

Erasing all of their losses, key Indian benchmarks entered into positive territory in late afternoon session, with Nifty reclaiming its crucial psychological level of 9,850. Traders took support with Finance Minister Arun Jaitley’s statement that the government was in the process of undertaking measures to change the environment and provide a boost to the Indian economy. Despite weakness in European and Asian counters, the broader markets too showed some favor in line with the larger peers. Some support also came with report that Prime Minister Narendra Modi in its bid to boost the economy and bring reforms, constituted a five-member Economic Advisory Council (EAC), led by NITI Aayog Member Bibek Debroy. Buying witnessed at Realty, Basic Materials and Metal counters, also helped the indices to erase losses. However, gains remained capped as Asian Development Bank downgraded India’s growth projection to 7% for the current fiscal, while lowering its forecast for the next financial year as well.

On the global front, European markets were trading in red on rising tensions between North Korea and the United States. Asian markets were also trading in red. Back home, in scrip specific development, Infosys gained after the company launched a private cloud solution in collaboration with Micro Focus SUSE, a pioneer in open source software, providing software-defined data center infrastructure and application delivery solutions. This solution will help businesses significantly accelerate their digital transformation journey by being hardware agnostic, enabling faster time to market through rapid adoption, providing faster delivery of services, and greater infrastructure agility and control.

The BSE Sensex is currently trading at 31639.31, up by 12.68 points or 0.04% after trading in a range of 31455.65 and 31693.59. There were 18 stocks advancing against 13 stocks declining on the index.

The broader indices were trading in green; the BSE Mid cap index was up by 0.77%, while Small cap index was up by 1.30%.

The top gaining sectoral indices on the BSE were Realty up by 3.25%, Metal up by 2.36%, Basic Materials up by 1.14%, Healthcare up by 0.93% and Industrials up by 0.66%, while Telecom down by 0.55%, FMCG down by 0.25%, TECK down by 0.25% and IT down by 0.01% were the top losing indices on BSE.

The top gainers on the Sensex were ONGC up by 4.04%, Axis Bank up by 2.84%, Tata Steel up by 2.37%, Lupin up by 1.94% and Coal India up by 1.46%. On the flip side, Hindustan Unilever down by 2.52%, Bharti Airtel down by 1.45%, Asian Paints down by 1.44%, Mahindra & Mahindra down by 0.99% and TCS down by 0.83% were the top losers.

Meanwhile, Asian Development Bank (ADB) has lowered Indian economic growth forecasts, amid weakness in private consumption, manufacturing output and business investment. In its latest ‘Asian Development Outlook (ADO) 2017’ release, ADB has slashed the country’s growth forecast to 7 per cent in financial year 2017-18 from the July forecast of 7.4 per cent. The regional development bank also lowered forecast for the next financial year to 7.4 per cent from earlier forecast of 7.6 per cent.

The report further said that investment in India is expected to remain muted in the current fiscal year due to budgetary constraints limit government expenditure. Besides, the regional development bank lowered its inflation estimates to average 4 per cent in the current year and 4.6 per cent in the next, down from the previous estimates of 5.2 per cent and 5.4 per cent, respectively.

ADB however pointed that India would remain one of the world's most dynamic emerging economies despite short term disruptions like last year’s demonetisation move and newly implemented Goods and Services tax (GST) regime. It further expects that Private consumption may pick up on the back of low inflation and anticipated wage hikes and said manufacturing would also improve as the sector adjusts to the new tax regime. ADB is also expecting improvement in tax collections on the back of GST.

The CNX Nifty is currently trading at 9873.60, up by 1.00 points or 0.01% after trading in a range of 9813.00 and 9885.45. There were 26 stocks advancing against 25 stocks declining on the index.

The top gainers on Nifty were ONGC up by 3.46%, Vedanta up by 2.85%, Indiabulls Housing Finance up by 2.83%, Axis Bank up by 2.52% and Tata Steel up by 2.38%. On the flip side, BPCL down by 2.77%, Hindustan Unilever down by 2.58%, Asian Paints down by 1.59%, Bharti Airtel down by 1.49% and Tech Mahindra down by 1.45% were the top losers.

Asian markets were trading mostly in red; Taiwan Weighted decreased 78.87 points or 0.76% to 10,257.02, Nikkei 225 decreased 67.39 points or 0.33% to 20,330.19, Jakarta Composite decreased 28.79 points or 0.49% to 5,865.82, KOSPI Index decreased 6.08 points or 0.26% to 2,374.32 and FTSE Bursa Malaysia KLCI decreased 3.41 points or 0.19% to 1,765.73. On the flip side, Shanghai Composite increased 2.03 points or 0.06% to 3,343.58 and Hang Seng was up by 12.67 points or 0.05% to 27,513.01.

European markets were trading in red; UK’s FTSE 100 dropped 15.19 points or 0.21% to 7,286.10, Germany’s DAX decreased 8.66 points or 0.07% to 12,586.15 and France’s CAC was down by 1.37 points or 0.03% to 5,265.76.