Bourses maintain gains, trade higher by around half a percent

The Indian markets have strengthened further in the second half of the trade, the early jitteriness induced by the weak macroeconomic data and rising oil prices seems to have receded. Earlier, in a knee jerk reaction to double whammy of factory output slowing to a three-month low of 2.2 per cent in October and retail inflation shooting up to a 15-month high of 4.88 per cent in November market sentiment were dampened. Also, traders remained wary ahead of Fed policy statement to be announced later today. However, with the progress of trade investors worry eased and they went for value buying. Additionally traders were getting some support with government`s Chief Statistician TCA Anant’s statement, that he don’t feel worried that the government may breach the fiscal deficit target of 3.2 per cent of the GDP for the current fiscal. In fact, he feels revenue would be buoyant by year-end and that the targeted deficit would be bridged. However, any major gains were capped with the Asian Development Bank (ADB) lowering India’s GDP forecast for the current fiscal by 0.3 per cent to 6.7 per cent, attributing it to tepid growth in the first half, demonetisation and transitory challenges of tax sector reforms.

The broader markets too have recovered and were showing positive trends, while on the sectoral front oil & gas, consumer durables and telecom have taken the lead, realty, metal and power were still languishing in red. In scrip specific development, Punj Lloyd was up by over 8 percent after the company received big orders from GAIL (India) and NHAI.

The BSE Sensex is currently trading at 33369.90, up by 141.91 points or 0.43% after trading in a range of 33123.44 and 33394.39. There were 22 stocks advancing against 8 stocks declining on the index.

The broader indices were trading in green; the BSE Mid cap index was up by 0.21%, while Small cap index added 0.34%.

The top gaining sectoral indices on the BSE were Oil & Gas up by 1.28%, Consumer Durables up by 1.08%, Telecom up by 0.92%, Energy up by 0.92%, TECK up by 0.55%, while Realty down by 0.43%, Metal down by 0.24%, Power down by 0.02% were the losing indices on BSE.

The top gainers on the Sensex were Kotak Mahindra Bank up by 2.37%, Hindustan Unilever up by 1.35%, ONGC up by 1.34%, HDFC Bank up by 1.09% and TCS up by 0.99%. On the flip side, ICICI Bank down by 0.67%, Power Grid Corpn. down by 0.64%, Tata Motors - DVR down by 0.54%, Adani Ports &SEZ down by 0.46% and SBI down by 0.24% were the top losers.

Meanwhile, continuing its declining trend, India’s Industrial production growth hit a three-month low of 2.2% in the month of October 2017, as compared to 4.2% growth in October 2016, while on a monthly basis, the IIP grew 3.8% in September this year. The stunted nature of factory output is largely due to the slowdown in manufacture and subdued demand coupled with a contraction in output of consumer durables. In October, the manufacturing sector which accounts for 77.63% of the index grew at 2.5%, compared to 4.8% in the same month last year. Mining sector, accounting for 14.37% of the index, also came a cropper growing at a mere 0.2% as against 1.0% in October 2016. Electricity generation rose 3.2% in October as compared to 3% a year before.

As per the data released by the Central Statistics Office of the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation, Index of Industrial Production (IIP) with base 2011-12 for the month of October 2017 stood at 123.0, which is 2.2% higher as compared to the level in the month of October 2016. The cumulative growth for the period April-October 2017 over the corresponding period of the previous year stood at 2.5%. The Indices of Industrial Production for the Mining, Manufacturing and Electricity sectors for the month of October 2017 stand at 101.2, 124.3 and 149.8 respectively. The cumulative growth in these three sectors during April-October 2017 over the corresponding period of 2016 has been 3.4%, 2.1% and 5.3% respectively.

Consumer durable goods output contracted by 6.9% in October as against a growth of 1.5% in the same month of the previous year. During the first seven months of this fiscal, the output of these goods declined by 1.9% as against a growth of 6% in the same period last fiscal. However, the consumer non-durables have recorded a growth of 7.7% in October as against 5.6% growth in the same month previous year. Besides, the growth rates in October 2017 over October 2016 are 2.5% in Primary goods, 6.8% in Capital goods, 0.2% in Intermediate goods and 5.2% in Infrastructure/ Construction Goods.

In terms of industries, 10 out of the 23 industry groups in the manufacturing sector have shown positive growth during the month of October 2017 as compared to the corresponding month of the previous year. The industry group ‘Manufacture of pharmaceuticals, medicinal chemical and botanical products’ has shown the highest positive growth of 23.0% followed by 12.8% in ‘Manufacture of motor vehicles, trailers and semi-trailers’ and 9.7% in ‘Manufacture of computer, electronic and optical products’. On the other hand, the industry group ‘Other manufacturing’ has shown the highest negative growth of (-) 36.4% followed by (-) 20.9% in ‘Manufacture of tobacco products’ and (-) 16.1% in ‘Manufacture of rubber and plastic products’.

The CNX Nifty is currently trading at 10286.30, up by 46.15 points or 0.45% after trading in a range of 10210.55 and 10296.55. There were 38 stocks advancing against 11 stocks declining on the index, while 2 stocks remained unchanged.

The top gainers on Nifty were Kotak Mahindra Bank up by 2.39%, HPCL up by 2.37%, BPCL up by 2.09%, Indian Oil Corp. up by 2.06% and Bharti Infratel up by 1.52%. On the flip side, Vedanta down by 1.23%, HCL Tech. down by 1.01%, ICICI Bank down by 0.73%, Adani Ports &SEZ down by 0.56% and Power Grid Corpn. down by 0.54% were the top losers.

Most of the Asian markets too were trading in green, FTSE Bursa Malaysia KLCI was up by 1.95 points or 0.11% to 1,731.52, Jakarta Composite gained 2.04 points or 0.03% to 6,034.41, KOSPI Index was higher by 19.55 points or 0.79% to 2,480.55, Shanghai Composite increased 22 points or 0.67% to 3,302.81, Taiwan Weighted added 27.42 points or 0.26% to 10,470.70 and Hang Seng surged by 408.49 points or 1.42% to 29,202.37.

On the other hand, Nikkei 225 declined by 108.1 points or 0.47% to 22,758.07.