Markets trade flat with positive bias in early deals

Indian equity benchmarks have made negative start, but managed to pare the losses and hovering near natural lines with positive bias in early deals on Tuesday. Some support came in with the India Meteorological Department’s (IMD) statement that India's annual monsoon rains have covered nearly half of the country and conditions are favourable for further advancement into the central and western parts this week. It added that the monsoon's progress will help farmers to accelerate sowing of summer-sown crops, which has been lagging due to a delay in the arrival of monsoon rains. Traders took note of Union Minister for Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises Nitin Gadkari’s statement that Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises MSMEs generated 5.87 lakh employment in 2017-18. However, there was some cautiousness with a report that unaccounted wealth outside the country held by Indians was estimated in the range of $216.48 billion to $490 billion over various periods between 1980 and 2010. As per the report, the sectors where unaccounted income is found to be the highest included real estate, mining, pharmaceuticals, pan masala, gutkha, tobacco, bullion, commodity, film, and education.

On the global front, Asian markets are trading mostly in red as investors looked toward a meeting between US President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping set to happen later in the week. The US markets had closed mostly lower on Monday as a dearth of economic data kept trading activity relatively subdued. Back home, telecom stocks exhibiting mixed performance with Crisil’s report that greater spread of optical fibre is necessary before 5G becomes a reality and the already stretched telcos will have to invest at least Rs 1 lakh crore in laying fibre networks in the next three years. In scrip specific development, IFCI jumped on getting nod to sell its 2.44% stake in NSE and Andhra Bank surged on getting nod to raise Rs 2,000 crore equity capital in FY20.

The BSE Sensex is currently trading at 39130.86, up by 7.90 points or 0.02% after trading in a range of 38946.04 and 39138.71. There were 16 stocks advancing against 15 stocks declining on the index.

The broader indices were trading mixed; the BSE Mid cap index gained 0.09%, while Small cap index was down by 0.03%.

The top gaining sectoral indices on the BSE were Oil & Gas up by 1.10%, Energy up by 1.05%, Realty up by 0.94%, Utilities up by 0.87%, Power up by 0.79%, while IT down by 0.54%, TECK down by 0.53%, FMCG down by 0.26%, Telecom down by 0.12%, Bankex down by 0.03% were the top losing indices on BSE.

The top gainers on the Sensex were ONGC up by 1.36%, Power Grid up by 1.28%, NTPC up by 1.22%, Vedanta up by 1.16% and Reliance Industries up by 1.02%. On the flip side, HCL Tech down by 1.15%, Sun Pharma down by 0.91%, Tech Mahindra down by 0.80%, Asian Paints down by 0.79% and Hindustan Unilever down by 0.72% were the top losers.

Meanwhile, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman has said that the Income Tax department issued refunds worth Rs 64,700 crore in this financial year till June 18, 2019. Besides, for full 2018-19 fiscal the amount released was over Rs 1.61 lakh crore. She said over 6.49 crore electronic returns were submitted for assessment year 2018-19 (financial year 2017-18), up 18.65% from over 5.47 crore in assessment year 2017-18.

She said the government has accorded high priority to issue refunds for all taxpayers including small taxpayers. Less than 0.5% of income tax returns (ITRs) are selected for scrutiny, the majority of ITRs are processed expeditiously and refunds are issued. She added that with increased use of technology the time taken to process ITRs is constantly reducing. She further said that 26.9 crore SMS and emails were sent to taxpayers in 2018-19, reminding them to file their ITRs on time.

The Minister also said in January 2019, the Government had approved integrated e-filing and Centralised Processing Centre (CPC) 2.0 project of the I-T department to process returns in a timely manner. The project envisages pre-filing of ITRs by the I-T department so as to improve accuracy of information contained in the return and drastically reduce the time taken to process returns and issue refunds.

The CNX Nifty is currently trading at 11703.70, up by 4.05 points or 0.03% after trading in a range of 11651.00 and 11705.95. There were 27 stocks advancing against 23 stocks declining on the index.

The top gainers on Nifty were BPCL up by 1.65%, ONGC up by 1.54%, Indian Oil Corporation up by 1.38%, NTPC up by 1.33% and Reliance Industries up by 1.26%. On the flip side, Bharti Infratel down by 1.85%, Zee Entertainment down by 1.67%, UPL down by 1.50%, Eicher Motors down by 1.17% and HCL Tech down by 1.16% were the top losers.

Asian markets were trading mostly lower; Hang Seng decreased 372.52 points or 1.31% to 28,140.48, Nikkei 225 slipped 106.80 points or 0.5% to 21,179.19, Taiwan Weighted dropped 64.86 points or 0.6% to 10,714.59, Shanghai Composite declined 54.77 points or 1.82% to 2,953.38, Straits Times trembled 4.48 points or 0.14% to 3,307.05 and KOSPI fell 3.29 points or 0.15% to 2,123.04, while Jakarta Composite soared 28.27 points or 0.45% to 6,316.74.