Benchmarks hold early gains; Oil &Gas, Power lead

Indian equities after plunging into red are now trading above the neutral line on back of buying in frontline counters in the late morning session. While, most of the Asian markets were trading in the green on encouraging Chinese manufacturing data, easing tensions in the Middle East and continued hopes that Greece will get its next batch of bailout funds. Back home, traders were seen piling up position in Oil &Gas, Power and Tech sector while selling was witnessed in Bankex, PSU, FMCG sector. RIL, BPCL, Indian Oil Corp, HPCL and Petronet LNG, from Oil &Gas pack were seen trading in green. Power Grid Corporation of India, Tata Power, Crompton Greaves and ABB from Power pack were seen trading in green. However PSU stocks - ONGC, NTPC, Bharat Heavy Electricals, Gail (India), and Rural Electrification Corporation were capping the markets’ gains.

In the scrip specific development, pharma stocks such as Ranbaxy Labs, Cipla, Lupin, GlaxoSmithKline Pharmaceuticals edged lower as the Central Government has cleared the National Pharmaceutical Pricing Policy that will bring 348 essential drugs under price control, leading to reduction in prices and putting some pressure on the companies with major domestic concentration. Hindustan Copper was trading in red, after government set the base price at Rs 155 a share for its 4 percent stake sale, way below Thursday's closing price of 266.15 rupees.

Further, IL&FS Transportation gained as its arm implemented Ranchi-Patratu Dam road project. Bharat Electronic edged higher on entering into agreement with Suzlon for 10.5 MW project. Idea Cellular soared on adding 2.30 lakh mobile subscribers in October. The NSE Nifty and BSE Sensex were managing to hold their psychological 5,600 and 18500 levels. The market breadth on BSE was positive, advances: declines in the ratio of 1143:899.

The BSE Sensex is currently trading at 18,531.21, up by 13.87 points or 0.07% and has touched a high and a low of 18,556.50 and 18,493.33 respectively. There were 20 stocks advancing against 10 declines on the index.

The broader indices too were trading in the green; the BSE Mid cap and Small cap indices up by 0.28% and 0.42% respectively.

The top gaining sectoral indices on the BSE were, Oil and Gas up by 0.56%, Power up by 0.38%, Tech up by 0.34%, IT up by 0.31% and CG up by 0.22% while, Bankex down by 0.17%, PSU down by 0.14%, FMCG down by 0.14%, Realty down by 0.09 and Auto down by 0.02% were losers on the index.

The top gainers on the Sensex were BHEL up by 1.65%, Sun Pharma up by 1.04%, RIL up by 0.98%, Dr Reddys up by 0.84% and Hindustan Unilever up by 0.66%.

On the flip side, Cipla was down by 1.37%, Gail was down by 0.84%, ICICI Bank was down by 0.63%, ITC was down by 0.54% and Tata Motors was down by 0.42%  were the top losers on the Sensex.

Meanwhile, with fiscal deficit for the first half crossing 65 per cent of budget target for entire year, Finance Minister P Chidambaram has exuded confidence that expenditure would be contained for the current financial year , given government measures for reining in the same.

Government has imposed measures like rationalization of expenditure and optimization of resources with a view of stimulating economic growth. The Investor’s friendly FM added that government will also attempt by employing effort to restrict the expenditure on central subsidies. The government plans to mandatorily cut the non-plan expenditure by 10% in the current financial year.

Pointing the economic slowdown to various factors, including the tight Reserve Bank of India monetary policy, he underscored that government had been taking steps to promote investment and growth. “Among domestic factors, the tightening of the monetary policy to rein inflation resulted in the slowing down of investment and growth, particularly in the industrial sector,” Chidambaram reiterated.

The finance minister has fixed target to contain fiscal deficit at 5.3 percent of the country's gross domestic product (GDP) in the current financial year as compared to 5.8 percent recorded in 2011-12. Further, the government off-lately outlined a road map for fiscal consolidation that target to cut fiscal deficit to three percent by 2016-17.

S&P Nifty is currently trading at 5,631.15, up by 3.40 points or 0.06% and has touched a high and a low of 5,637.75 and 5,619.55 respectively. There were 26 stocks advancing against 22 declines and 2 remain unchanged on the index.

The top gainers of the Nifty were BHEL up by 1.60%, Asian Paint up by 1.39%, HCL Tech up by 1.25%, RIL up by 1.06% and Sun Pharma were up by 1.00%. On the flip side, Cipla down by 1.28%, Gail down by 1.12%, Ranbaxy down by 0.79%, ICICI Bank down by 0.64% and Grasim down by 0.59%, were the major losers on the index.

Most of the Asian equity indices were trading in the green; Shanghai Composite was up by 0.74%, Hang Seng gained 0.40%, Straits Times gained 0.10%, Seoul Composite was up by 0.51% and Taiwan Weighted surged by 2.98%.

On the flip side, Jakarta Composite was down by 0.14%, KLSE Composite was down by 0.28% were the only losers amongst Asian pack.

The Japanese market remained closed today.