Bourses continue healthy trade in late afternoon session

The Indian benchmarks continued their healthy trade in late afternoon session, despite increasing cases of the Omicron variant of COVID-19. Gains in across sectors, led by Realty, auto, Telecom and Industrials stocks, pushed the headline indices higher. Bajaj Finance was the top gainer on Sensex, up above 2%, followed by Bharti Airtel, Sun Pharma, SBI, and Reliance Industries. Traders took note of report that newly elected Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI) President Sanjiv Mehta has said that India needs to focus on ease of doing business, consistent tax policy and lower cost of capital. He also underlined the need for constant efforts to boost private investment for high economic growth over a long period of time. On the global front, Asian markets were trading mixed after President Joe Biden reassured investors by calling for vaccinations and testing but no travel curbs in response to the omicron coronavirus variant. European markets were trading mostly in red as traders continued to weigh up coronavirus restrictions, infection rates and the effects on the economy.

The BSE Sensex is currently trading at 56715.10, up by 396.09 points or 0.70% after trading in a range of 56471.03 and 56820.89. There were 24 stocks advancing against 6 stocks declining on the index.

The broader indices were trading in green; the BSE Mid cap index gained 1.06%, while Small cap index was up by 1.32%.

The top gaining sectoral indices on the BSE were Realty up by 2.13%, Telecom up by 1.67%, Auto up by 1.60%, Industrials up by 1.58% and Capital Goods was up by 1.38%, while there were no losers on the sectoral indices on the BSE

The top gainers on the Sensex were Bajaj Finance up by 2.41%, Bharti Airtel up by 2.39%, Sun Pharma up by 2.21%, SBI up by 1.73% and Reliance Industries up by 1.64%. On the flip side, Power Grid down by 2.20%, Nestle down by 0.61%, Wipro down by 0.57%, HDFC down by 0.48% and ITC down by 0.45% were the top losers.

Meanwhile, with an aim to realize the nation’s goals of improving ‘Ease of living’ and ‘Ease of doing business’, the Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT) is conducting a National Workshop on the ‘Next Phase of Reforms for Reducing Compliance Burden’. The Workshop will witness wide participation from across Central Ministries and States/UTs.

The workshop will have three parallel breakout sessions. The theme of the first would be ‘Breaking Silos and Enhancing Synergies among Government Departments’. This session would focus, among others, on integration between Central Ministries/Departments and State single window systems, deliberation on single business ID, etc.

The second is based on the theme of ‘National Single Sign-on for Efficient Delivery of Citizen Services’ which would deal with deliberations on on-boarding all citizen services by Central and State Government services under one roof - ‘National Citizen Centric Portal’ and the creation of a ‘National Digital Profile’ for all citizens that shall be used to pre-fill Government forms and also as a tool to citizen benefit welfare discovery.

The third Breakout Session is themed ‘Effective Grievance Redressal’ and the session would have discussion on several topics like usage of next generation technology in effective grievance redressal, accountability -based mechanism for enhanced effectiveness of redressal quality.

The CNX Nifty is currently trading at 16892.70, up by 121.85 points or 0.73% after trading in a range of 16819.50 and 16920.35. There were 38 stocks advancing against 12 stocks declining on the index.

The top gainers on Nifty were Tata Motors up by 3.33%, Hindalco up by 3.02%, Eicher Motors up by 2.78%, UPL up by 2.71% and Bharti Airtel up by 2.60%. On the flip side, Power Grid down by 2.15%, SBI Life down by 1.19%, Wipro down by 0.56%, Indian Oil down by 0.50% and Nestle down by 0.47% were the top losers.

Asian markets were trading mixed, Hang Seng increased 131.00 points or 0.57% to 23,102.33, Nikkei 225 surged 44.62 points or 0.16% to 28,562.21, Taiwan Weighted strengthened 37.56 points or 0.21% to 17,826.83 and KOSPI was up by 9.45 points or 0.32% to 2,984.48. On the flip side, Shanghai Composite declined 2.51 points or 0.07% to 3,622.62, Straits Times trembled 3.89 points or 0.13% to 3,081.19 and Jakarta Composite was down by 24.72 points or 0.38% to 6,529.59.

European markets were trading mostly in red, UK’s FTSE 100 decreased 20.83 points or 0.29% to 7,276.58 and Germany’s DAX was down by8.64 points or 0.06% to 15,438.80. On the flip side, France’s CAC was up by 5.46 points or 0.08% to 6,970.45.