Markets remain range bound; realty surges over 3%

Markets are not showing any movement, trading in a tight band in the noon session, though some of the Asian peers were showing signs of recovery but it was still not making any impact on the sentiments of the domestic markets. There has been worries related to the uncertainties related to Europe over the developments during the weekend and hence traders are waiting to see the movement in European markets to take further cues. Strengthening rupee has given some comfort to the markets while the PSU oil marketing companies are moving higher despite CCI’s ordering a detailed investigation into alleged cartelization, as the international crude prices after a brief consolidation, once again started moving southward. High beta realty has gained strength, while the power sector stocks are buzzing on the hopes of restructuring of loans for state electricity boards.

The BSE Sensex is currently trading at 18,765.82 up by 12.99 points or 0.07% after trading in a range of 18,811.13 and 18,687.60. There were 16 stocks advancing against 14 declines on the index.

The market breadth on BSE was comfortably in green with 1,679 advances against 871 declines. The broader indices were outperforming the benchmarks with quiet a margin the BSE Mid cap index was up by 1.17%, while Small cap index gained 1.26%.

On the BSE sectoral space, Realty up by 3.08%, Power up by 2.73%, Capital Goods up by 2.27%, Metal up by 1.60% and Bankex up by 1.27% were the top gainers. While FMCG down by 1.40%, IT down by 0.70%, TECk down by 0.56%, Health Care down by 0.31% and Oil & gas down by 0.20% were the top losers.

The top gainers on the Sensex were BHEL up by 6.03%, Jindal Steel up by 4.78%, Tata Power up by 3.16%, Mahindra & Mahindra up by 2.52% and Sterlite Inds up by 2.30%. On the other hand, Hindustan Unilever down by 2.18%, ITC down by 2.45%, HDFC down by 1.64%, TCS down by 1.50% and ONGC down by 1.47% were the top losers on the Sensex.

Meanwhile, amid the grim global economic outlook scenario, the industry body Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI) in its latest ‘Export Survey’ has pointed out that India is unlikely to achieve its $360 billion export target in the current financial year due to rising input costs and weak demands for Indian goods in North American and European markets and has said that the exporting community of the nation is not optimistic about a possible improvement in the overall export conditions over the next two quarters.

India's exports increased by around 21% to $303.71 billion in financial year ended March 31, 2012, higher than the government's target of $300 billion, but this year the situation looks grim and India’s exports slumped by 9.7% year-on-year in August 2012, decelerating for the fourth consecutive month. The FICCI survey revealed that considering the first five months’ figures, the government's export target of $360 billion for the fiscal 2012-13 seems difficult to achieve. Over a 63% of respondents in the survey believed that export condition would further deteriorate in the second half of the 2012-13. Rise in raw materials prices along with weak demand from overseas were cited as major reason for the declining export as around 89% of the respondents drew attention to the rising costs of raw materials, which have gone up by 20-30% in the last three years.

About 65% of around 80 participants of the survey said that export conditions currently have deteriorated compared to the last six months of 2011-12. Though, the participants were not very optimistic about any substantial improvement in the export condition in the second half of the fiscal but said that market diversification of exports was yielding some positive results for Indian exporters and regions like Africa, Middle East, South East Asia and Latin American would see an improvement in demand in the next six months.

The S&P CNX Nifty is currently trading at 5,697.60, up by 6.45 points or 0.11% after trading in a range of 5,709.85 and 5,671.50. There were 28 stocks advancing against 22 declines on the index.

The top gainers of the Nifty were BHEL up by 6.52%, Jindal Steel up by 5.25%, Reliance Infra up by 4.13%, JP Associates up by 3.24% and Asix Bank was up by 3.23%. While, HCL Tech down by 3.27%, Hindustan Unilever down by 2.81%, ITC down by 2.39%, Ranbaxy down by 1.72% and TCS down by 1.62% were the losers on the index.

Some of the Asian indices have made it into the green towards the end of the trade, Shanghai Composite was up by 0.42%, Kospi Composite Index gained 0.05%, and Taiwan Weighted was up by 0.18%.        

On the other hand, Hang Seng was down by 0.17%, Jakarta Composite lost 0.76%, and KLSE Composite lost 0.80%, Nikkei 225 was down by 0.45% and Straits Times declined by 0.10%.