Markets maintain gaining momentum; Sensex inching towards 33K level

Key Indian benchmarks maintained their gaining momentum in late morning session, with gains of around 0.50% amid firm Asian markets.  Traders continued to take encouragement with Finance Minister Arun Jaitley’s statement that India is set to become an ‘extremely attractive’ country to do business, on the back of greater digitisation and formalisation of financial activities and businesses. Investors also remained optimistic with CEA Arvind Subramanian’s statement that the rate cuts by the Council will not have any major impact on government's revenue and no major effect on India's fiscal deficit. Furthermore, along with larger peers, the broader indices too have performed well, aided by buying in Energy, Industrials and Utilities stocks, while there were only two indices - Realty and Metal which showed lackluster performance.

On the global front, Asian markets were trading mostly in green, shrugging off the weak cues overnight from Wall Street and lower commodity prices. Back home, in scrip specific development, Surya Roshni traded jubilantly after the company bagged orders through competitive e-bidding for LED Street Lights worth Rs 89.77 crore for Design, Manufacture, Supply and Testing under PAN India SLNP (Street light National Program) and for Chandrapur, Bikaner (Rajasthan) and Telangana from Energy Efficiency Services (EESL).

The BSE Sensex is currently trading at 32944.24, up by 183.80 points or 0.56% after trading in a range of 32829.82 and 32956.05. There were 20 stocks advancing against 9 stocks declining on the index, while 2 stocks remained unchanged.

The broader indices were trading in green; the BSE Mid cap index was up by 0.57%, while Small cap index was up by 0.52%.

The top gaining sectoral indices on the BSE were Energy up by 0.87%, Industrials up by 0.62%, Utilities up by 0.62%, Capital Goods up by 0.58% and Consumer Durables up by 0.53%, while Realty down by 0.16% and Metal down by 0.10% were the only losing indices on BSE.

The top gainers on the Sensex were Reliance Industries up by 1.78%, Tata Motors - DVR up by 1.60%, Tata Motors up by 1.49%, Larsen & Toubro up by 1.17% and Kotak Mahindra Bank up by 1.07%. On the flip side, Coal India down by 2.17%, Adani Ports & SEZ down by 1.60%, Sun Pharma down by 0.58%, Bharti Airtel down by 0.55% and Hero MotoCorp down by 0.29% were the top losers.

Meanwhile, chief economic adviser (CEA) Arvind Subramanian has said that recent move by the Goods and Services Tax (GST) Council to cut tax on 178 items, though, will have marginal impact on the revenue but that will be compensated by compliance benefits. He also feels that fall in prices will also help keep inflation under control. Besides, he said that during the meeting of GST council, there were expectations that land and real estate will also be brought under the purview of GST.

Subramanian further said that land, real estate, petroleum products and electricity will now be on the GST Council’s agenda in the next meeting and noted that real estate will be considered first as a lot of black money is tied in this sector. Besides, he said that the other sector that could get prominence in the next GST rejig will be electricity. He noted that the taxes for electricity is embedded in the supply chain and kind of undermine competitiveness of Indian manufacturing. He also pointed out that bringing in electricity will be highly desirable and it will be part of how to make Indian manufacturing competitive. As for how GST is faring, he said that it is too early to get a definitive assessment of how the new tax regime is performing.

Talking on the latest exports growth number for October 2017, CEA has observed that non-oil exports are a little over 9 percent which is substantially higher than what the country did past 8-9 months. He said the non-oil export growth has picked up from 2016. However, he said that India is under-performing as against its peers like Bangladesh. He also stated that it would take few more months to know whether India has put behind the transitional challenges coming after demonetisation and GST and has achieved higher pace of export growth.

The CNX Nifty is currently trading at 10166.75, up by 48.70 points or 0.48% after trading in a range of 10139.20 and 10169.35. There were 29 stocks advancing against 20 stocks declining on the index, while 1 stock remained unchanged.

The top gainers on Nifty were Bharti Infratel up by 2.70%, Reliance Industries up by 1.78%, GAIL India up by 1.70%, Aurobindo Pharma up by 1.54% and Tata Motors up by 1.53%. On the flip side, Coal India down by 1.95%, Adani Ports & SEZ down by 1.52%, BPCL down by 1.49%, Bosch down by 0.82% and Indiabulls Housing Finance down by 0.80% were the top losers.

Asian markets were trading mostly in green; Taiwan Weighted increased 7.5 points or 0.07% to 10,638.15, KOSPI Index increased 12.41 points or 0.49% to 2,530.66, Jakarta Composite increased 58.5 points or 0.98% to 6,030.81, Hang Seng increased 158.41 points or 0.55% to 29,010.10 and Nikkei 225 increased 285.55 points or 1.3% to 22,313.87.

On the flip side, Shanghai Composite decreased 6.67 points or 0.2% to 3,395.86 and FTSE Bursa Malaysia KLCI decreased 2.05 points or 0.12% to 1,720.94.