Domestic markets trade over half a percent higher in early deals

Indian equity benchmarks made slightly positive start on Wednesday tracking overnight gains on Wall Street. Markets are trading higher with gains of over half a percent each in early deals. Some support came in as terming elevated food prices a temporary phenomenon, Economic Affairs Secretary Tarun Bajaj said it should be back to normal soon on the back of arrival of new crops and government measures for improving supply of essential commodities. Separately, he said Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman will soon announce the next set of stimulus package to boost the coronavirus-hit economy. Traders over looked the government data showing that after recording positive growth in September, India's exports declined 5.4 percent to $24.82 billion in October on account of dip in shipments of petroleum products, gems and jewellery, leather, and engineering goods. Besides, India has reported 43,659 fresh Covid-19 cases in the past 24 hours. The total caseload now stands at 8,312,947. The country's death toll has mounted to 123,579.

On the global front, most of the Asian markets were trading higher amid the overnight gains on Wall Street. Members of the Bank of Japan's monetary policy board said that the country's economy is gradually picking up even as the Covid-19 pandemic is likely to continue to hamper the global economic recovery, minutes from the central bank's monetary policy meeting on September 16 and 17 revealed. However, there was some cautiousness amid the outcome of the U.S. presidential election, amid indications of a tight race in some battleground states. Back home, the Reserve Bank of India is looking at diversifying its foreign exchange reserve investments amid the fall in global interest rates caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. In scrip specific development, Bank of Baroda fell after rolling back its new cash deposit and withdrawal charges.

The BSE Sensex is currently trading at 40534.15, up by 273.02 points or 0.68% after trading in a range of 40107.96 and 40571.92. There were 20 stocks advancing against 9 stocks declining, while 1 stock remain unchanged on the index.

The broader indices were trading in green; the BSE Mid cap index rose 0.49%, while Small cap index was up by 0.61%.

The top gaining sectoral indices on the BSE were IT up by 3.24%, TECK up by 2.73%, Healthcare up by 1.31%, Capital Goods up by 1.02%, Energy up by 0.94%, while Realty down by 1.29%, Telecom down by 0.78%, Bankex down by 0.58%, PSU down by 0.23%, Metal down by 0.12% were the top losing indices on BSE.

The top gainers on the Sensex were Sun Pharma up by 4.34%, Infosys up by 4.33%, Tech Mahindra up by 3.15%, HCL Technologies up by 2.76% and TCS up by 2.37%. On the flip side, ICICI Bank down by 2.03%, Power Grid down by 1.92%, Axis Bank down by 1.00%, Bharti Airtel down by 0.89% and HDFC down by 0.81% were the top losers.

Meanwhile, Finance Secretary Tarun Bajaj has said that Indian economy is recovering fast and will soon be back on rails as all the parameters have started showing improvement. He said ‘we are actually seeing an improvement in all parameters generally and we are expecting further improvement in the month of November and this should continue. Hopefully the economy should be back on rails and it is moving much faster than what had been anticipated by a lot of experts and economists’.

Bajaj said ‘we continue to see an uptick in the economy since the past few months since the opening up of the economy and the manufacturing PMI has touched 58.9, which is the highest in the last decade’. He noted that the power consumption in the month of October is 12.10 percent more than October 2019, which is a signal of economic activity. Similarly, he said the value of E-way bills has gone up almost 19 percent in the month of October, it is valued at 16.82 lakh crore and the railway freight is up by 15.5 percent in September and almost 14 percent in October. He added that average daily toll collection is up by almost 120 percent. So basically these are signals of economic activity going up.

Finance Secretary further indicated that the GST collection has touched Rs 1.05 lakh crore, almost 10 percent higher year-on-year. The FPI inflow is about $3.2 billion in October as compared to some negative figure for September. The number of issues in the capital market have gone up. He also pointed out that credit growth has seen some improvement by registering a growth of 5.8 percent in October as compared to 5.3 percent in September. He said ‘the FDI during April-August is $35.73 billion...external sector remains robust, our foreign reserves have touched almost $560 billion’.

The CNX Nifty is currently trading at 11903.45, up by 89.95 points or 0.76% after trading in a range of 11777.70 and 11914.40. There were 34 stocks advancing against 15 stocks declining, while 1 stock remain unchanged on the index.

The top gainers on Nifty were Sun Pharma up by 3.41%, Infosys up by 3.20%, Indusind Bank up by 3.05%, Wipro up by 2.90% and Tech Mahindra up by 2.67%. On the flip side, UPL down by 2.27%, Power Grid down by 1.44%, ICICI Bank down by 1.13%, Hindalco down by 0.97% and Bharti Airtel down by 0.89% were the top losers.

Asian markets were trading mostly in green; Nikkei 225 surged 471.92 points or 2.03% to 23,767.40, Straits Times rose 22.52 points or 0.90% to 2,519.74, Taiwan Weighted jumped 131.42 points or 1.03% to 12,867.43, KOSPI advanced 18.73 points or 0.80% to 2,362.04, Jakarta Composite gained 13.91 points or 0.27% to 5,173.36 and Shanghai Composite was up by 0.99 points or 0.03% to 3,272.06, while Hang Seng was down by 6.25 points or 0.03% to 24,933.48.