Indian benchmarks add gains to continue jubilant trade

Indian equity benchmarks added gains to continue their jubilant trade in the early noon session, with Nifty and Sensex posting gains of over 0.30% due to heavy buying by foreign funds and domestic institutional investors. As per provisional data, FIIs had bought shares worth Rs 252.52 crore on August 27 and DIIs had purchased shares worth Rs 1,117.24 crore. Domestic sentiments were buoyed on sharp buying in metal, energy and power stocks. Some support also came with finance minister Arun Jaitley’s statement the government is looking at achieving economic growth higher than predicted by many in the current financial year and India could become the fifth largest economy (surpassing the UK) next year. Sentiments were also optimistic with Commerce Minister Suresh Prabhu stating that the government is working on a comprehensive strategy in a bid to double India’s export by the year 2025. Traders paid no heed to State Bank of India’s (SBI) research report Ecowrap stating that India’s current account deficit (CAD) is likely to touch 2.8% of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in the current fiscal (FY19) on account of surge in crude oil prices and moderate growth in exports.

On the global front, most of the Asian markets were trading in green following yet another day of record highs on Wall Street as the U.S. and Mexico announced a new trade agreement. Back home, in currency market, rupee strengthened against the US dollar due to selling of the American currency by exporters and banks. In scrip specific development, Lloyds Metals and Energy rose on entering into MoU with MIDC and Repco Home Finance gained on setting up satellite centre at Sri City SEZ.

The BSE Sensex is currently trading at 38840.27, up by 146.16 points or 0.38% after trading in a range of 38760.58 and 38920.14. There were 21 stocks advancing against 10 stocks declining on the index.

The broader indices were trading in green; the BSE Mid cap index inched up by 0.01%, while Small cap index was up by 0.55%.

The top gaining sectoral indices on the BSE were Metal up by 1.22%, Energy up by 0.83%, Power up by 0.74%, Basic Materials up by 0.66% and Utilities up by 0.66%, while Consumer Durables down by 1.11%, Realty down by 0.57%, Bankex down by 0.15%, Capital Goods down by 0.10% and PSU down by 0.07% were the top losing indices on BSE.

The top gainers on the Sensex were Vedanta up by 2.11%, NTPC up by 1.81%, Kotak Mahindra Bank up by 1.53%, Maruti Suzuki up by 1.43% and Asian Paints up by 1.33%. On the flip side, Yes Bank down by 2.52%, Axis Bank down by 0.92%, SBI down by 0.68%, Hindustan Unilever down by 0.68% and Hero MotoCorp down by 0.63% were the top losers.

Meanwhile, Commerce Minister Suresh Prabhu has said that the government is working on a comprehensive strategy in a bid to double India’s export by the year 2025. He also said that the meeting of different exports’ stakeholders discussed a strategy for revitalizing India’s exports. He also noted that this is necessary in view of challenges like uncertainty of global trade, rigid approach of banks affecting availability of credit, high logistics cost and productivity standards and qualities.

The minister has emphasised that a special strategy is being prepared for the services sector to achieve broad-based growth instead of the existing pre-dominance of IT-ITeS, diversification of services exports across geographical territories, ssensitization of the States to formulate new structures, policies and action plans for services sector and promotion of India as a services hub. He noted that apart from traditional markets, India must also look at boosting trade with smaller countries. He also urged exporters to not miss the opportunity presented by China’s consumer market and make the most of the world’s mega import expo being held in China in November, 2018.

The commerce ministry is also taking meetings with key ministries for preparing sectoral export strategies. It said that commodity and territory specific strategy is also being prepared for items like gems and jewellery, textiles, engineering, electronics, chemicals, pharma, agri and marine products. Territory specific strategy will cover North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), Europe, North East Asia, ASEAN, South Asia, Latin America, Africa, Australia and New Zealand. Meanwhile, in 2017-18, India’s total merchandise exports grew by about 10 percent to $303 billion, while services exports rose by 18.8 percent to $195 billion in the same period.

The CNX Nifty is currently trading at 11735.60, up by 43.65 points or 0.37% after trading in a range of 11710.50 and 11760.20. There were 33 stocks advancing against 17 stocks declining on the index.

The top gainers on Nifty were Hindalco up by 2.45%, Vedanta up by 2.00%, NTPC up by 1.90%, Maruti Suzuki up by 1.67% and Kotak Mahindra Bank up by 1.50%.

On the flip side, Yes Bank down by 2.56%, Titan Co down by 1.63%, Bharti Infratel down by 1.11%, Axis Bank down by 0.95% and Hindustan Unilever down by 0.80% were the top losers.

Asian markets were trading mostly in green; Straits Times increased 29.22 points or 0.9% to 3,254.84, Taiwan Weighted advanced 87.34 points or 0.79% to 10,989.55, Jakarta Composite surged 14.39 points or 0.24% to 6,040.36, KOSPI increased 1.10 points or 0.05% to 2,300.40 and Nikkei 225 was up 13.83 points or 0.06% to 22,813.47.

On the flip side, Hang Seng decreased 6.64 points or 0.02% to 28,264.63 and Shanghai Composite was down 3.70 points or 0.13% to 2,777.20.