Benchmarks hold early gains; Realty, Auto lead

Benchmarks were trading higher by over one per cent in the late morning session on the back of positive cues from global markets and as sentiment turned bullish on hopes that parliament may function after the UPA government seemed to be going with voting on FDI in retail. Investment banker Goldman Sachs too has added enthusiasm to the markets after it raised India to ‘overweight’ from ‘market-weight’, citing growth recovery and inflation moderation ahead. While, most of the Asian markets were trading in the green after on affirmative cues from the US and Europe, also there were hopes of more stimulus from Japan as leaders of opposition party have called for unlimited policy easing in the country. Back home, traders were seen piling up position in Realty, Auto and Bankex sector while selling was witnessed in IT and TECk sector. In the scrip specific development, GMR Infrastructure was trading in red after Government of Maldives terminated a contract given to company for developing Ibrahim Nasir International Airport at Male. Suzlon Energy surged on plan of debt restructuring. Tata Motors gained on foraying into Bangladesh passenger car market.  TCS soared on bagging multi-year contract from UK government. The NSE Nifty and BSE Sensex were managing to hold their psychological 5,700 and 19000 levels. The market breadth on BSE was positive, in the ratio of 1484:776.

The BSE Sensex is currently trading at 19053.51 up by 211.43 points or 1.12% after trading in a range of 19073.84 and 18873.63. There were 26 stocks advancing against 4 declines on the index.

The broader indices were trading in green; the BSE Mid cap index was up by 0.77% and Small cap index was up by 0.66%.

The top gaining sectoral indices on the BSE were, Realty up by 2.11%, Auto up by 1.74%, Bankex up by 1.36%, Oil& Gas up by 1.07% and CD up by 1.06%. While, IT down by 0.21% and TECk down by 0.37% were the only losers on the index.

The top gainers on the Sensex were Bajaj Auto up by 3.89%, Tata Motors up by 3.72%, Cipla up by 2.79%, HDFC up by 2.46% and Coal India up by 1.94%. While, Infosys  down  by 0.99%, BHEL  down  by 0.67%, Maruti Suzuki  down  by 0.42% and Sterlite Industries down by 0.20%  were losers on the index.

Meanwhile, the Empowered Group of Ministers (EGoM) on telecom, headed by Finance Minister P Chidambaram, will be meeting today after the lukewarm response to recently concluded 2G spectrum auction as the government garnered only Rs 9,407 crore out of Rs 28,000 crore which was minimum value of the airwaves put for auction and the reason was said to be the high reserve price fixed by government.

Government had fixed around 8 times high reserve price for GSM spectrum and 11 times high price for CDMA spectrum compared to the amount on which companies were allocated pan-India permits till 2008. While, the CDMA auction completely flopped with no bidders, the most striking part of the auction in GSM was that auction did not see any takers for spectrum in lucrative Delhi, Mumbai, Rajasthan and Karnataka region.

Though, the government has not disclosed the issues that will be discussed at EGoM but it is the first meeting on spectrum issues after auction of spectrum and as per earlier stated, issue like option to look at price of spectrum for which there has been no bid and CDMA spectrum may be discussed in the meet as government has plans to auction unsold spectrum by March next year.

 The S&P CNX Nifty is currently trading at 5,784.90, up by 57.45 points or 1.00% after trading in a range of 5,793.85 and 5,736.10. There were 44 stocks advancing against 6 declines on the index.

The top gainers of the Nifty were Tata Motors up by 3.90%, Bajaj Auto up by 3.76%, Cipla up by 2.74%, HDFC up by 2.46% and BPCL up by 1.95%.

On the flip side, Infosys down by 1.29%, Maruti down by 1.11%, BHEL down by 0.83%, Power Grid down by 0.72% and Sesa Goa down by 0.32%, were the losers on the index.

Most of the Asian equity indices were trading in the green; Kospi Composite up by 1.00%, Straits Times up by 0.95%, Nikkei 225 up by 1.09%, Taiwan Weighted up by 1.07%, and Hang Seng up by 1.17%, , KLSE Composite up by 0.29% and Shanghai Composite was up by 0.28% while , Jakarta Composite down by 0.22% was the lone loser.