Indian bourses continue to trade in positive territory

Key benchmark indices continued to trade in positive territory in afternoon session, on the back of buying by funds and retail investors. Sentiments remained positive with private report that India will remain the fastest growing major economy, much ahead of China, in the next decade 2019-28. Some support also come with the Finance Ministry expecting bad loan recoveries to touch Rs 1.80 lakh crore during the current fiscal with two major cases at the final stage of resolution. However, the upside remained capped with report that the Goods and Services Tax (GST) Council has deferred a decision on tax rates on real estate and lottery till February 24, and extended the deadline for businesses to file sales returns for January till February 22 for all states; and February 28 for Jammu & Kashmir. On the global front, Asian markets were trading mixed, after the Federal Reserve left open the possibility it could lift interest rates this year, while investors kept an optimistic eye on China-US trade talks.

The BSE Sensex is currently trading at 35855.00, up by 98.74 points or 0.28% after trading in a range of 35707.29 and 35909.73. There were 17 stocks advancing against 13 stocks declining on the index.

The broader indices were trading in green; the BSE Mid cap index rose 0.46%, while Small cap index was up by 0.57%.

The top gaining sectoral indices on the BSE were Basic Materials up by 1.04%, Metal up by 1.03%, Energy up by 0.90%, Realty up by 0.62% and Bankex up by 0.32%, while Telecom down by 1.25%, Auto down by 0.13%, Utilities down by 0.07%, TECK down by 0.04% and Power down by 0.04% were the top losing indices on BSE.

The top gainers on the Sensex were Vedanta up by 2.40%, ICICI Bank up by 2.09%, Tata Motors - DVR up by 1.98%, Tata Motors up by 1.64% and Reliance Industries up by 1.31%. On the flip side, Bharti Airtel down by 1.26%, Maruti Suzuki down by 1.16%, Yes Bank down by 1.10%, NTPC down by 0.87% and Infosys down by 0.79% were the top losers.

Meanwhile, the Retirement fund body, Employment Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO) in its latest ‘Net Payroll Data’ report has showed that employment generation in the India’s formal sector almost trebled to touch a 16-month high of 7.16 lakh in December 2018 as compared to 2.37 lakh in the same month a year ago. It also indicted that around 72.32 lakh new subscribers were added to social security schemes of the EPFO from September 2017 to December 2018. This indicates that these many jobs were created in the last 16 months.

However, the payroll data showed that there is a downward revision of 23.44 per cent in the new jobs at to 5.80 lakh created in November 2018, from earlier estimates of 7.16 lakh released by the EPFO last month. It also revised the cumulative job addition data from September 2017 to November 2018 downwards 11.36 per cent to 65.15 lakh from earlier forecast of 73.50 lakh. The sharpest revision was for the month of March 2018 in the latest report which showed net addition of 5,498 subscribers against 55,831 subscribers in the last month's estimate.

According to the data report, March 2018 figure is low due to large number of exits reported in the month of March, in view of it being the closing month of the financial year. During December 2018, the maximum number of 2.17 lakh jobs were created in the 18-21 years age group followed by 2.03 lakh in the 22-25 years age bracket.

The CNX Nifty is currently trading at 10760.50, up by 25.05 points or 0.23% after trading in a range of 10721.50 and 10778.55. There were 30 stocks advancing against 20 stocks declining on the index.

The top gainers on Nifty were Indiabulls Housing Finance up by 2.42%, Vedanta up by 2.31%, Grasim Industries up by 2.13%, ICICI Bank up by 2.06% and Tech Mahindra up by 2.01%. On the flip side, Bharti Infratel down by 3.28%, BPCL down by 2.14%, Bharti Airtel down by 1.33%, Maruti Suzuki down by 1.19% and Infosys down by 1.05% were the top losers.

Asian markets were trading mixed; Hang Seng increased 24.75 points or 0.09% to 28,538.80, Nikkei 225 surged 32.74 points or 0.15% to 21,464.23, Taiwan Weighted strengthened 47.07 points or 0.46% to 10,319.53 and Jakarta Composite soared 8.30 points or 0.13% to 6,521.08. On the flip side, Shanghai Composite declined 14.94 points or 0.54% to 2,746.28, KOSPI fell 1.10 points or 0.05% to 2,228.66 and Straits Times was down by 3.97 points or 0.12% to 3,274.41.