Post Session: Quick Review

Extending previous session’s choppiness, Indian equity benchmarks ended the December F&O expiry trading session with marginal losses as traders remained watchful on account of rising corona cases as India recorded a dramatic surge in its Omicron tally by logging more than 900 cases. Soon after making a negative start, domestic bourses gained traction and traded in green for most part of the day as sentiments got some support as the Federation of Indian Export Organisations (FIEO) said the country's exports are expected to register healthy growth rate in the financial year 2022-23 and might touch $530 billion as exporters are flushed with orders. It added that additional exports will come from some of the PLI (production-linked incentive) sectors in the next fiscal. Traders also took some support with private report stating that employment opportunities in the e-commerce and allied industries witnessed a 28 per cent surge in 2021, and recruitment activities in this segment will gain further momentum driven by economic recovery and aggressive vaccination drive.

Despite some volatility during noon deals markets traded with decent gains as traders took some relief from a note of the Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI) second Financial Stability Report (FSR) stated that the Omicron variant of coronavirus remains the major challenge along with rising inflation pressures, though the economy has steadily gained momentum and remained resilient since the second quarter of the current fiscal. Traders also took note of the I-T department’s statement that over 5 crore income tax returns (ITR) for the financial year ended March 2021 have been filed so far. However, traders opted to book all of their gains in dying hour of trade to end slightly in red as traders turned pessimistic as the Reserve Bank expressed doubts about the government’s ability to contain fiscal deficit at the budgeted 6.8 per cent this fiscal year after it moved the second supplementary demand of grants worth Rs 3.73 lakh crore which came in spite of a massive 83 per cent jump in net tax revenue so far this year to Rs 10.53 lakh crore.

On the global front, European stocks edged higher as holiday-thinned trade continues in the region. Market players have spent recent weeks juggling concerns over new Covid restrictions and tighter central bank policy with early studies suggesting omicron strain of the virus is milder than previous variants like delta. Asian markets ended mostly in red despite U.S. shares edging up to another record high overnight amid light volumes in the final days of the year.

Back home, the GST Council, chaired by Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, will meet on December 31 and discuss, among other things, report of the panel of state ministers on rate rationalisation. On the sectoral front, the telecom services sector stocks remained in focus as ICRA revised outlook on telecom services sector to stable from negative and said the telecom tariff hike along with the recent relief package offers sufficient headroom for the industry to undertake deleveraging as well as fund capex for 5G tech upgrade.

Sensex ended at 57,794.32, down by 12.17 points or 0.02% after trading in a range of 57578.99 and 58010.03. There were 14 stocks advancing against 16 stocks declining on the index. (Provisional)

The broader indices were ended mixed; the BSE Mid cap index slipped 0.22%, while Small cap index was up by 0.19%. (Provisional)

The top gaining sectoral indices on the BSE were IT up by 0.96%, TECK up by 0.82%, Healthcare up by 0.51%, Consumer Durables up by 0.43% and Telecom was up by 0.10%, while Energy down by 1.62%, Oil & Gas down by 1.43%, Metal down by 1.15%, Realty down by 0.99% and Utilities down by 0.94% were the top losing indices on BSE. (Provisional)

The top gainers on the Sensex were NTPC up by 2.40%, HCL Tech up by 1.93%, Indusind Bank up by 1.90%, Titan Company up by 1.85% and Wipro up by 1.73%. On the flip side, Reliance Industries down by 1.63%, Tata Steel down by 1.30%, Maruti Suzuki down by 1.14%, Bajaj Finance down by 0.67% and Sun Pharma down by 0.61% were the top losers. (Provisional)

Meanwhile, the Federation of Indian Export Organisations (FIEO) has said that the country’s exports are expected to register healthy growth rate in the next financial year (FY23) might touch $530 billion as exporters are flushed with orders. FIEO further stated that additional exports will come from some of the PLI (production-linked incentive) sectors in the next fiscal.

FIEO President A Sakthivel said ‘Since India will be adding over $130 billion or so in the current fiscal, we should aim to build on the same and thus aim much higher. Since we are likely to cross $400 billion in 2021-22, we should focus and aim for exports in the vicinity of $525-530 billion in 2022-23.’ Sakthivel said exporters across sectors are flushed with orders for the next fiscal, which will push the growth prospects in the next fiscal.

Besides, the Commerce and industry ministry data recently had showed that India’s exports rose by 36.2 per cent to $23.8 billion during the first three weeks of December 2021 (during December 1-21), over the same period of 2020-21 ($17.49 billion). It was up by 27.70 per cent over the same period of 2019-20 ($18.65 billion).

The CNX Nifty ended at 17,203.95, down by 9.65 points or 0.06% after trading in a range of 17146.35 and 17264.05. There were 22 stocks advancing against 27 stocks declining on the index. (Provisional)

The top gainers on Nifty were NTPC up by 3.05%, HCL Tech up by 1.95%, Cipla up by 1.84%, Indusind Bank up by 1.77% and Dr. Reddy's Lab up by 1.48%. On the flip side, Bajaj Auto down by 1.89%, Reliance Industries down by 1.81%, UPL down by 1.54%, JSW Steel down by 1.54% and Tata Steel down by 1.37% were the top losers. (Provisional)

European markets were trading in green, UK’s FTSE 100 gained 1.65 points or 0.02% to 7,422.34, Germany’s DAX rose 6.02 points or 0.04% to 15,858.27 and France’s CAC was up by 14.92 points or 0.21% to 7,176.44.

Asian markets ended mostly lower on Thursday amid light volumes with year-end fast approaching, despite another record high closing of US shares overnight. Seoul shares ended lower despite positive industrial output data signalling an easing in global supply bottlenecks. Japanese shares declined as traders feared after the country confirmed a total of 502 new coronavirus cases on Wednesday, exceeding the 500-mark for the first time in over two months. However, Chinese shares advanced as Chinese authorities continued efforts to curb the Covid-19 outbreak in the western city of Xi'an. The Chinese investor sentiments cheered further as its government guaranteed to focus on a consumption recovery and reduce certain income tax rates. Hong Kong shares ended marginally higher even as China Evergrande Group shares falling more than 9 percent in Hong Kong after some holders of two China Evergrande Group dollar bonds with coupons due on Tuesday saying they had yet to receive payment.