Markets enter into green terrain; oil & gas takes the lead

Indian equity markets have changed their course and are trading in green albeit marginally, the positive start of European markets gave the much needed pull to the ailing Indian markets to enter into green. Oil & gas sector has taken the lead ahead of the heavyweight Reliance Industries quarterly numbers. There is expectation that the oil major will come up with sequentially better numbers, though lower than its year ago performance. Realty sector too was trading with gain of over half a percent but one of the other rate sensitive auto sector is still trading in red, as the surge in inflation numbers has dimmed chances of a rate cut by the RBI in its upcoming monetary policy review. The continuous appreciation in rupee was weighing down the IT and technology sector stocks.

The BSE Sensex is currently trading at 18,701.85, up by 26.67 points or 0.14% after trading in a range of 18,726.38 and 18,596.65. There were 20 stocks advancing against 10 declines on the index.

The broader indices too have recovered; the BSE Mid cap index was up by 0.12% and Small cap index gained 0.57%.

The top gainers on the BSE sectoral space were, oil & gas up by 0.68%, Realty up by 0.63%, FMCG up by 0.44%, HC up by 0.37% and Power was up by 0.28%, while Consumer Durables down by 0.77%, IT down by 0.59%, TECk down by 0.36%, Auto down by 0.28% and CG down by 0.21% were the laggards.

The major gainers on the Sensex were Hindalco Industries up by 1.95%, Cipla up by 1.55%, Bharti Airtel up by 1.33%, Tata Power up by 1.08% and RIL up by 0.99%. On the other hand, Maruti Suzuki down by 2.13%, Infosys down by 1.20%, Sterlite Inds down by 1.17%, Coal India down by 0.83% and L&T down by 0.81% were major losers on the Sensex.  

The Foreign Investment Promotion Board (FIPB) is mulling to clear about 50 FDI proposals including those of Larsen & Toubro and Mahindra Group at its meeting on October 19, 2012. In the last meeting, the FIPB had approved 14 proposals of FDI total to Rs 113.35 crore. The FIPB’s green signal to various FDI proposals is the renewed efforts by the government to attract private investments.

According to the scheme, out of the total 49 proposals, 16 are fresh and 19 are those on which decisions were deferred in the previous meetings of the Board. The 6 proposals include those of Mahindra and Mahindra and Larsen & Toubro which relate to defence production and 3 to the telecommunications sector. As India permits FDI in most of the segments through automatic route, the FIPB clears those proposals which are related to sensitive sectors like defence and telecom.

In recent times, the government liberalized its FDI policy in the multi-brand retail and aviation sector. In addition to that the government would be seeking Parliament’s approval to raise foreign investment upper limit in the insurance sector to 49% from 26%.

The S&P CNX Nifty is currently trading at 5,684.60, up by 8.55 points or 0.15% after trading in a range of 5,693.70 and 5,651.05. There were 26 stocks advancing against 24 declines on the index.

The top gainers of the Nifty were Hindalco up by 1.74%, Ranbaxy up by 1.40%, RIL up by 1.27%, Cipla up by 1.26% and Tata Power was up by 0.98%. On the other hand Maruti Suzuki down by 2.10%, Coal India down by 1.22%, Lupin down by 0.94%, Infosys down by 0.89% and Powergrid down by 0.79% were the major losers on the index

Asian equity indices showed a mixed trend; Shanghai Composite was down by 0.30%, Kospi Composite declined 0.40% and Taiwan Weighted lost 0.24%,

On the other hand Hang Seng was marginally up by 0.06%, Jakarta Composite added 0.05%, KLSE Composite was up by 0.07%, Nikkei 225 advanced 0.51% and Straits Times added 0.19%.

European markets were trading in green; CAC 40 was up by 0.99%, DAX added 0.72% and FTSE 100 was trading up by 0.34%.