Local equities continue to trade in green

After a flat opening, local equity benchmarks have gathered pace and continued their trade in green in morning session due to increased buying by funds. Some support came with Fitch Ratings’ report that the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) is the first central bank in the Asia-Pacific region to have begun explicit interest rate easing cycle by cutting the policy rate back-to-back in the last two monetary policy reviews in 2019. Traders took note of a private report that to meet shortfall arising from the cut in Iranian oil imports, India is considering US offer for supply of oil and gas worth $3 billion. The government is also looking at increasing supplies from other countries including Saudi Arabia, UAE, Mexico, Brazil, and Colombia. Traders ignored S&P Global Platts’ statement that China factor will determine the amount of shortfall India will see from Iran crude after America's decision to impose sanctions on buyers of Tehran oil. Besides, a private report state that President Donald Trump may count Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi among his international allies, but New Delhi is smarting over unexpected US decisions it sees as ignoring the interests of an increasingly close partner.

On the global front, Asian markets were trading mixed, after New York equities retreated from record highs, with weak economic data around the world offsetting a forecast-beating earnings season. Back home, the value of India's copper products exports declined 70% in the year ended in March 2019 primarily due to the shutdown of Vedanta's copper smelter. Exports of copper and copper products, including cathodes, were $1.07 billion in the period from April 2018 to March 2019, down from $3.48 billion in the 2017/18 fiscal year.

The BSE Sensex is currently trading at 39116.29, up by 61.61 points or 0.16% after trading in a range of 39009.72 and 39128.59. There were 16 stocks advancing against 15 stocks declining on the index.

The broader indices were trading in green; the BSE Mid cap index gained 0.26%, while Small cap index was up by 0.50%.

The top gaining sectoral indices on the BSE were Basic Materials up by 1.04%, Consumer Durables up by 0.70%, Utilities up by 0.69%, Capital Goods up by 0.69%, Power up by 0.67%, while Telecom down by 0.84%, Metal down by 0.45%, Auto down by 0.32%, TECK down by 0.27%, IT down by 0.20% were the top losing indices on BSE.

The top gainers on the Sensex were Yes Bank up by 2.86%, Larsen & Toubro up by 1.10%, Power Grid up by 1.09%, Reliance Industries up by 0.81% and Tata Motors - DVR was up by 0.65%. On the flip side, Vedanta down by 0.83%, Maruti Suzuki down by 0.71%, Bajaj Auto down by 0.70%, Infosys down by 0.63% and Tata Steel was down by 0.62% were the top losers.

Meanwhile, rating agency ICRA in its latest report said the wireless broadband subscriber base continues to maintain its strong growth trajectory in the month of February 2019. Wireless broadband subscriber base rose to 532 million in February, onboarding 10.2 million users during the month. The report highlighted Reliance Jio leads the wireless broadband market, with market share of 56%, followed by Bharti and Vodafone-Idea at 21% each.

It noted that 100% of Reliance Jio's subscribers are broadband subscribers, while the same ratio for Vodafone-Idea stood at 27% and for Bharti at 32%. Besides, the report mentioned the wireless subscriber base in India increased to 1,183.7 million in February 2019, adding 1.7 million subscribers over the previous month. The active wireless subscriber base remained steady at 1,023 million.

It added to the wireless broadband subscriber base maintained strong momentum, demonstrating a growth of two percent during the month of February. The growth in subscriber base in February was mainly driven by Reliance Jio, which added 7.8 million subscribers. State-owned BSNL or MTNL (Bharat Sanchar Nigam/ Mahanagar Telephone Nigam) was the only other telco gaining subscribers in the month, adding 0.9 million users.

The CNX Nifty is currently trading at 11760.50, up by 34.35 points or 0.29% after trading in a range of 11715.95 and 11763.05. There were 31 stocks advancing against 19 stocks declining on the index.

The top gainers on Nifty were Ultratech Cement up by 4.94%, Grasim Industries up by 3.88%, Yes Bank up by 3.18%, BPCL up by 1.85% and UPL was up by 1.35%. On the flip side, Bharti Infratel down by 3.12%, Vedanta down by 0.92%, Infosys down by 0.81%, Eicher Motors down by 0.69% and Tata Steel was down by 0.69% were the top losers.

Asian markets were trading mixed; Jakarta Composite dropped 65.12 points or 1.01% to 6,382.77, Shanghai Composite declined 22.66 points or 0.71% to 3,178.95, KOSPI fell 7.80 points or 0.35% to 2,193.23 and Straits Times was down by 3.72 points or 0.11% to 3,358.71.

On the other hand; Taiwan Weighted strengthened 7.98 points or 0.07% to 11,035.62, Hang Seng increased 23.39 points or 0.08% to 29,829.22 and Nikkei 225 was up by 110.42 points or 0.5% to 22,310.42.