Bourses remain weak in early noon session

Indian equity benchmarks continued to trade lower in early noon session, on the back of profit booking by investors amid weak global cues, sinking rupee and soaring crude oil prices. Selling pressure was appeared in Oil & Gas, Realty and Energy stocks with Sensex and Nifty tumbling by 241.90 and 86.50 points respectively. Anxiety remained in the markets as India has again missed the target of becoming an electricity-surplus nation by a whisker as its peak power deficit stood at 0.8 percent and the overall energy deficit remained 0.6 percent in the financial year 2019. Investors paid no attention to a report that India’s growth trajectory holds immense potential for global stakeholders to establish energy, infrastructure and technology collaboration with the country. Meanwhile, US has warned all countries including India to completely end their imports of Iranian oil or be subject to American sanctions. The countries that will have to cut off Iranian oil imports are India, China, Turkey, Japan and South Korea. China and India are currently the largest importers of Iranian oil. If they don't go along with President Donald Trump's demands, that could cause tensions in both bilateral relationships and spill over into other issues.

On the global front, Asian markets were trading mixed, as investors awaited the return of major financial markets from the Good Friday holiday, while oil prices spiked on a report the US is likely to ask all importers of Iranian oil to end their purchases or face sanctions. Back on street, on scrip specific development, HDFC bank declined despite reporting 23% rise in Q4 net profit. For the year ended March 31, 2019, the company has also reported a rise of 20.54% in its net profit at Rs 21,078.14 crore.

The BSE Sensex is currently trading at 38898.38, down by 241.90 points or 0.62% after trading in a range of 38827.55 and 39158.22. There were 8 stocks advancing against 23 stocks declining on the index.

The broader indices were trading in red; the BSE Mid cap index lost 0.80%, while Small cap index was down by 0.71%.

The few gaining sectoral indices on the BSE were IT up by 0.55%, TECK up by 0.41%, while Oil & Gas down by 2.37%, Realty down by 2.17%, Energy down by 1.95%, PSU down by 1.15% and Auto was down by 0.99% were the top losing indices on BSE.

The top gainers on the Sensex were Tata Motors - DVR up by 1.06%, TCS up by 0.86%, Tata Motors up by 0.59%, Power Grid Corporation up by 0.54% and Infosys was up by 0.46%. On the flip side, Yes Bank down by 3.51%, Reliance Industries down by 1.88%, Indusind Bank down by 1.81%, Axis Bank down by 1.63% and HDFC was down by 1.25% were the top losers.

Meanwhile, the Retirement fund body, Employment Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO) in its latest ‘Net Payroll Data’ report has showed that job creation in India’s formal sector almost trebled to 8.61 lakh in February 2019 in comparison to 2.87 lakh reported during the corresponding month last year. It noted that the highest ever job creation figures were reported in January 2019 at 8.94 lakh against the provisional estimate of 8.96 lakh released last month.

According to data, during February 2019, the highest number of 2.36 lakh jobs were created in the 22-25 years age group. This was followed by 2.09 lakh jobs in the 18-21 years age bracket. It also showed that 80.86 lakh new jobs were created in the 18 months period from September 2017 to February 2019. However, the payroll data has revised downward the number of net subscribers added or new jobs created from September 2017 to January 2019 to 72.24 lakh from 76.48 lakh released last month.

The EPFO stated that the sharpest revision was for March 2018 in the latest report which showed contraction or exit of 55,934 members from the EPFO subscriptions. Last month, the EPFO payroll data had showed that as many as 29,023 members exited from its schemes in March 2018. In February 2019, the EPFO data had showed that as many as 5,498 members joined EPFO schemes in March 2018. On contraction in March 2018 numbers, it said, the figure is negative due to large number of exits reported in the month of March, in view of it being the closing month of the financial year.

The CNX Nifty is currently trading at 11666.30, down by 86.50 points or 0.74% after trading in a range of 11646.00 and 11727.05. There were 12 stocks advancing against 38 stocks declining on the index.

The top gainers on Nifty were Wipro up by 0.90%, Tata Motors up by 0.66%, TCS up by 0.61%, Power Grid Corporation up by 0.59% and Infosys was up by 0.34%. On the flip side, BPCL down by 5.18%, Indian Oil Corporation down by 3.91%, Yes Bank down by 3.69%, Indiabulls Housing down by 3.13% and Reliance Industries was down by 2.10% were the top losers.

Asian markets were trading mixed; Taiwan Weighted strengthened 19.21 points or 0.18% to 10,987.71, Straits Times advanced 6.03 points or 0.18% to 3,353.61 and Nikkei 225 was up by 34.39 points or 0.15% to 22,234.95.

On the flip side, Shanghai Composite declined 52.52 points or 1.61% to 3,218.28, KOSPI fell 1.49 points or 0.07% to 2,214.66 and Jakarta Composite was down by 89.82 points or 1.38% to 6,417.40.