Local bourses continue to trade with modest gains

Indian benchmark indices continued to trade with modest gains in early afternoon session, on buying by funds and retail investors despite weak trend in Asian markets. The indices remained in green with taking support from Agriculture Ministry suggesting several measures including setting up of a system for forecasting demand, green logistics corridor for perishables, and use of e-commerce, to boost shipments of agriculture commodities to $60 billion by 2022. Traders also took note of Niti Aayog CEO Amitabh Kant’s statement that the country needs to improve its human development index (HDI) to achieve a growth of around 10 percent. However, gains were limited as cautiousness remained in markets ahead of RBI policy meet beginning today. The Reserve Bank is likely to maintain status quo on the key interest rate on Wednesday notwithstanding elevated oil prices and government’s announcement to steeply hike minimum support price for kharif crops. On the sectoral front, telecom sector was in focus after Telecom secretary Aruna Sundararajan said the turbulent days for the telecom industry are behind it, and things should settle down completely by early 2019. 

On the global front, Asian markets were trading mostly in red, tracking declines seen on Wall Street as underwhelming earnings news overshadowed the release of solid second-quarter US gross domestic product data. Back home, the BSE Sensex is currently trading at 37388.41, up by 51.56 points or 0.14% after trading in a range of 37292.45 and 37496.80. There were 17 stocks advancing against 14 stocks declining on the index.

The broader indices were trading in green; the BSE Mid cap index was up by 0.13%, while Small cap index was up by 0.46%.

The top gaining sectoral indices on the BSE were PSU up by 1.92%, Bankex up by 0.82%, Telecom up by 0.81%, Oil & Gas up by 0.80% and Energy up by 0.80%, while IT down by 0.72%, TECK down by 0.51%, Capital Goods down by 0.22%, Realty down by 0.05% and Auto down by 0.04% were the top losing indices on BSE.

The top gainers on the Sensex were ICICI Bank up by 3.61%, SBI up by 3.56%, Vedanta up by 2.43%, Power Grid up by 2.03% and Hindustan Unilever up by 1.69%. On the flip side, HDFC Bank down by 1.48%, Wipro down by 1.42%, Infosys down by 1.25%, Larsen & Toubro down by 1.10% and Adani Ports & SEZ down by 0.90% were the top losers.

Meanwhile, Union Minister of State for Finance Shiv Pratap Shukla has said that the government is making concerted efforts to double the farmers' income by 2022. He also said that the government has also taken concrete steps as per the recommendations of the Swaminathan committee reports.

The minister has said that after coming to power, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had appealed to people from the downtrodden section of society to open bank accounts. He also said that this was ridiculed by the opposition parties. He noted that today, in those 36,000 Jandhan accounts, nearly Rs 87,000 crore have been deposited. He added that this has proved to be an important step in strengthening the economy.

On the Goods and Services Tax (GST) front, Shukla stated that in the future GST rate of some necessary products will be reviewed, and may be reduced.

The CNX Nifty is currently trading at 11286.10, up by 7.75 points or 0.07% after trading in a range of 11261.45 and 11309.35. There were 27 stocks advancing against 23 stocks declining on the index.

The top gainers on Nifty were ICICI Bank up by 4.13%, SBI up by 3.49%, Vedanta up by 2.34%, HPCL up by 1.96% and Power Grid up by 1.86%. On the flip side, HDFC Bank down by 1.49%, Hindalco down by 1.45%, Infosys down by 1.33%, Eicher Motors down by 1.30% and HCL Tech. down by 1.29% were the top losers.

Asian markets were trading mostly in red; Taiwan Weighted decreased 42.24 points or 0.38% to 11,033.54, KOSPI dipped 1.48 points or 0.06% to 2,293.51, Nikkei 225 dropped 167.91 points or 0.74% to 22,544.84, Straits Times shed 15.66 points or 0.47% to 3,309.32, Hang Seng decreased 236.77 points or 0.83% to 28,567.51 and Shanghai Composite was down by 17.19 points or 0.6% to 2,856.40.

On the flip side, Jakarta Composite surged 19.83 points or 0.33% to 6,008.97.