Local indices continue to trade in green terrain in morning deals

Indian equity benchmarks continued to trade in green terrain in morning deals, on the back of firm global cues and hopes of government stimulus to revive the economy. Sentiments remained positive with NITI Aayog CEO Amitabh Kant’s statement that India's massive digital footprint is one of its biggest strengths for Artificial Intelligence (AI) development, and established platforms like Aadhaar, UPI along with massive digital infrastructure create a unique opportunity for this futuristic technology to be leveraged to enhance transparency and improve governance. Some support also came as Reserve Bank of India (RBI) in its latest data has showed that between 2015-16 and 2019-20, digital payment volumes have grown at a compounded annual growth rate of 55.1 per cent - from 5.93 billion transactions in the year to March 2016 to 34.35 billion transactions in the year to March 2020. However, gains remain capped as investors remained on sidelines ahead of industrial production data for August and CPI inflation for September which are due later in the day.  On the sectoral front, power stocks remained in focus as power producers' total dues owed by distribution firms rose over 37 percent year-on-year to Rs 1.33 lakh crore in August 2020, reflecting stress in the sector.  

On the global front, Asian markets were trading mostly in green, following the positive cues from Wall Street amid continued optimism about a new U.S. stimulus bill after U.S. President Donald Trump suggested he was once again in favor of a broad relief package. Meanwhile, the Cabinet Office said that the value of core machine orders in Japan was up a seasonally adjusted 0.2 percent on month in August, coming in at 752.5 billion yen. That beat forecasts for a decline of 1.0 percent following the 6.3 percent increase in July. The Bank of Japan said that the value of overall bank lending in Japan was up 6.4 percent on year in September, coming in at 573.737 trillion yen. That was in line with expectations and down from the 6.7 percent gain in August.

The BSE Sensex is currently trading at 40783.69, up by 274.20 points or 0.68% after trading in a range of 40696.69 and 40905.49. There were 18 stocks advancing against 12 stocks declining on the index.

The broader indices were trading in red; the BSE Mid cap index fell 0.35%, while Small cap index was down by 0.13%.

The top gaining sectoral indices on the BSE were IT up by 1.21%, TECK up by 1.05%, FMCG up by 0.70%, Bankex up by 0.69% and Energy up by 0.54%, while Metal down by 3.34%, Basic Materials down by 1.22%, Auto down by 0.92%, Consumer Discretionary down by 0.47% and Consumer Durables down by 0.38% were the top losing indices on BSE.

The top gainers on the Sensex were ITC up by 3.90%, SBI up by 2.12%, Infosys up by 1.79%, Kotak Mahindra Bank up by 1.75% and Power Grid up by 1.68%. On the flip side, ONGC down by 1.21%, Bajaj Auto down by 1.00%, Tata Steel down by 0.93%, Ultratech Cement down by 0.82% and Titan Co down by 0.77% were the top losers.

Meanwhile, Reserve Bank of India (RBI) in its latest data has showed that between 2015-16 and 2019-20, digital payment volumes have grown at a compounded annual growth rate of 55.1 per cent - from 5.93 billion transactions in the year to March 2016 to 34.35 billion transactions in the year to March 2020. In value terms, they have grown from Rs 920.38 trillion to Rs 1,623.05 trillion during this period, clipping at an annual compounded rate of 15.2 per cent. It showed that concerted efforts by RBI to move to a non/less-cash economy by pushing digital payments have begun to pay rich dividends as the volume of such payments has jumped manifold in the past five years.

Giving a year-wise data, in 2016-17 digital payments jumped to 9.69 billion transactions from 5.93 billion transactions in the previous year in volume terms, while in value the same rose to Rs 1,120.99 trillion. Similarly, the numbers continued to scale new peaks with volume growing to 1,4.59  billion transactions and value jumping to Rs 1,369.86 trillion in 2017-18. Come 2018-19, the numbers clipped at a faster pace with volume jumping to 2,3.43 billion transactions while the value rose to Rs 1,638.52 trillion.

However, FY20 saw a massive spike in volumes over the previous year to 3,4.34 billion transactions but in value slipped down to Rs 1,623.05 trillion, which can be attributed to the steep fall in the overall economy and the massive job losses, forcing people to spend less and preserve more cash. Some of the recent RBI initiatives for enhancing security and increase customer confidence in digital payments include mandating use of only EMV chip and PIN-based debit and credit cards from January 2019; tokenisation from January 2019, when RBI issued a framework for tokenisation of card transactions which allowed all authorised card networks to offer tokenisation services, irrespective of the app provider, use case; facility to switch on/off transaction rights; mandatory positive confirmation to remove any ambiguity for funds transferred through NEFT and RTGS from March 2010, and January 2019, respectively.

The CNX Nifty is currently trading at 11975.25, up by 61.05 points or 0.51% after trading in a range of 11956.35 and 12022.05. There were 23 stocks advancing against 27 stocks declining on the index.

The top gainers on Nifty were ITC up by 3.96%, SBI up by 2.09%, Infosys up by 1.87%, Kotak Mahindra Bank up by 1.79% and Power Grid up by 1.68%. On the flip side, JSW Steel down by 2.69%, Tata Motors down by 2.20%, GAIL India down by 1.75%, ONGC down by 1.14% and SBI Life Insurance down by 1.12% were the top losers.

Asian markets were trading mostly in green; Taiwan Weighted strengthened 32.91 points or 0.26% to 12,920.10, Jakarta Composite soared 37.98 points or 0.75% to 5,091.64, KOSPI rose 6.10 points or 0.26% to 2,398.06, Straits Times advanced 14.11 points or 0.56% to 2,547.07, Shanghai Composite gained 74.18 points or 2.27% to 3,346.26 and Hang Seng increased 489.58 points or 2.03% to 24,608.71.

On the flip side, Nikkei 225 slipped 69.87 points or 0.3% to 23,549.82.