Benchmarks continue to trade higher in morning deals

Indian equity benchmarks continued to trade higher in morning deals, as investors react to positive macroeconomic data. India's consumer price inflation slowed more than expected in September, while industrial production grew in line with expectations in August. The consumer price index rose 4.35 percent year-on-year following a 5.30 percent in August. Street had forecast a 4.50 percent increase. Industrial production rose 11.9 percent year-on-year in August while market participants had forecast 12.0 percent increase. Sentiments also remained up-beat as International Monetary Fund (IMF) said that India's economy, which contracted by 7.3 percent due to the COVID-19 pandemic, is expected to grow by 9.5 percent in 2021 and 8.5 percent in 2022. It also said India is doing well in terms of vaccinating its own people and this is certainly helpful in its economy.  Meanwhile, Union Minister Narayan Rane exhorted MSME Ministry officials to brace up for enhancing the output of micro, small and medium enterprises sector, highlighting its potential to boost India's exports and GDP growth.

On the global front, Asian markets were trading mixed as traders weighed the impact of elevated inflation on economic recovery and looked ahead to earnings reports. Back home, on the sectoral front, stocks related to Aviation sector remained in focus as the Ministry of Civil Aviation, keeping in mind the passenger demand for air travel, announced that airlines can operate domestic flights without any capacity restriction from October 18 onwards. The carriers have been operating 85 per cent of their pre-COVID domestic services since September 18.

The BSE Sensex is currently trading at 60571.72, up by 287.41 points or 0.48% after trading in a range of 60452.29 and 60649.32. There were 23 stocks advancing against 7 stocks declining on the index.

The broader indices were trading in green; the BSE Mid cap index rose 1.02%, while Small cap index was up by 0.71%.

The top gaining sectoral indices on the BSE were Auto up by 3.53%, Utilities up by 2.08%, Industrials up by 1.93%, Power up by 1.76% and Consumer Durables up by 1.72%, while there were no losing sectoral indices on the BSE.

The top gainers on the Sensex were Mahindra & Mahindra up by 4.67%, Titan Company up by 3.01%, Power Grid Corporation up by 2.43%, Tata Steel up by 1.85% and Sun Pharma up by 1.27%. On the flip side, Hindustan Unilever down by 0.47%, ITC down by 0.25%, SBI down by 0.20%, Nestle down by 0.19% and Dr. Reddy's Lab down by 0.18% were the top losers.

Meanwhile, International Monetary Fund (IMF) has said that India's economy, which contracted by 7.3 percent due to the COVID-19 pandemic, is expected to grow by 9.5 percent in 2021 and 8.5 percent in 2022. India's growth projection released by the latest World Economic Outlook (WEO) remains unchanged from its previous WEO update of July this summer but is a three-percentage point in 2021 and 1.6 percentage point drop from its April projections. According to the latest WEO update, released ahead of the annual meeting of the IMF and the World Bank, the world is expected to grow at 5.9 per cent in 2021 and 4.9 per cent in 2022.

Gita Gopinath, Chief Economist of the IMF, said that compared to their July forecast, the global growth projection for 2021 has been revised down marginally to 5.9 percent and is unchanged for 2022 at 4.9 percent. However, this modest headline revision masks large downgrades for some countries. She said the outlook for the low-income developing country group has darkened considerably due to worsening pandemic dynamics. She also said the downgrade also reflects more difficult near-term prospects for the advanced economy group, in part due to supply disruptions.

Gopinath further said that partially offsetting these changes, projections for some commodity exporters have been upgraded on the back of rising commodity prices. Pandemic-related disruptions to contact-intensive sectors have caused the labour market recovery to significantly lag the output recovery in most countries. Observing that the dangerous divergence in economic prospects across countries remains a major concern, she said aggregate output for the advanced economy group is expected to regain its pre-pandemic trend path in 2022 and exceed it by 0.9 per cent in 2024.

The CNX Nifty is currently trading at 18124.90, up by 132.95 points or 0.74% after trading in a range of 18050.75 and 18128.85. There were 39 stocks advancing against 11 stocks declining on the index.

The top gainers on Nifty were Tata Motors up by 16.00%, Mahindra & Mahindra up by 4.33%, Titan Co up by 3.05%, Power Grid Corporation up by 2.43% and Tata Steel up by 2.13%. On the flip side, ONGC down by 1.35%, Coal India down by 0.93%, Hindustan Unilever down by 0.50%, Eicher Motors down by 0.43% and Nestle down by 0.34% were the top losers.

Asian markets were trading mixed; KOSPI rose 26.62 points or 0.91% to 2,943.00, Jakarta Composite soared 30.67 points or 0.47% to 6,516.94 and Straits Times advanced 44.31 points or 1.42% to 3,156.36. On the flip side, Taiwan Weighted dropped 116.05 points or 0.7% to 16,346.79, Nikkei 225 slipped 44.85 points or 0.16% to 28,185.76 and Shanghai Composite declined 12.51 points or 0.35% to 3,534.43.