Sensex, Nifty continues positive trade; Upper House vote on FDI eyed

Following a positive start and a subsequent fall into the negative zone, Indian equity markets rebounded in the green zone and continued trading positive in the late morning session with buying support from blue chip counters. The Sensex moved up by 37.45 points, while Nifty index was up 4.45 points. Meanwhile, investors were not making any strong positions on concerns that weather the contentious policy of FDI in multi-brand retail will make it through the Upper House of Parliament today. Moreover, Mayawati-led Bahujan Samaj Party pledged her support to the Bill in the Rajya Sabha, which is a great hope for the market. In currency market, rupee witnessed some profit booking on Monday after earlier sessions’ excellent rally due to strong demand for the American currency by oil importers. On sectoral front, realty and power stocks were off their early highs. Healthcare, bank and metal stocks were trading marginally higher, while FMCG and information technology stocks remain subdued. On the global front, most Asian stock markets were trading higher, tracking a positive lead from Wall Street where stocks posted moderate gains overnight. Back home, the market breadth favoring positive trend; there were 1,466 shares on the gaining side against 1,055 shares on the losing side while 141 shares remain unchanged.

The BSE Sensex is currently trading at 19,524.25 up by 37.45 points or 0.19% after trading in a range of 19,561.87 and 19,458.08. There were 14 stocks advancing against 16 declines on the index.

The broader indices were trading in green; the BSE Mid cap index was up by 0.74% and Small cap index was up by 0.74%.

The top gaining sectoral indices on the BSE were Auto up by 1.41%, Consumer Durables up by 1.24%, Capital Goods up 1.06%, PSU was up by 0.64% and Realty was up by 0.37%, while IT down by 0.38% and FMCG down by 0.21% were the only losers on the BSE.

The top gainers on the Sensex were Maruti Suzuki up by 3.04%, Coal India up by 2.31%, Tata Motors up by 2.16%, BHEL up by 2.01% and M&M was up by 1.61%.

On the flip side, HDFC down by 0.81%, Sterlite Inds down by 0.78%, HDFC Bank down by 0.59%, TCS down by 0.50% and ITC down by 0.48% were the top losers on the Sensex.

Meanwhile, to discuss a roadmap for spectrum that remained unsold in the recent auction, the Empowered Group of Ministers (EGoM) on telecom chaired by Finance Minister P Chidambaram is expected to hold a meeting on December 7, 2012. The meeting, which has been deferred twice since last month, is expected to discuss a roadmap for auction of unsold GSM spectrum in Delhi, Mumbai, Rajasthan and Karnataka.

The EGoM will take decision on the reserve price that should be fixed for auction. It also has to decide on CDMA spectrum, which saw no participants due to the high reserve price. The spectrum was left unsold after government was able to auction only a part of the lot. Auction bid for GSM spectrum attracted bids worth only Rs 9,407 crore which is too low as against the minimum expected amount of Rs 28,000 crore.

However, the high-powered EGoM panel, headed by Finance Minister will also take a final call on Department of Telecommunications’ (DoT) plan to conduct auction of 900 MHz bands in Delhi, Mumbai and Kolkata region along with 1,800 MHz bands. The proposal to auction 900 Mhz band was suggested after recognizing that the band requires less number of telecom towers as compared to that in 1800 Mhz band.

The S&P CNX Nifty is currently trading at 5,935.35, up by 4.45 points or 0.08% after trading in a range of 5,949.85 and 5,918.10. There were 24 stocks advancing against 26 declines on the index.

The top gainers of the Nifty were Maruti Suzuki up by 2.99%, Coal India up by 2.30%, IDFC up by 1.94%, Tata Motors up by 1.87% and BHEL was up by 1.76%.

On the flip side, Grasim down by 1.43%, Sesa Goa down by 1.22%, HCL Tech down by 1.20%, Axis Bank down by 0.99%, and DLF down by 0.95% were the top losers on the Nifty.

Asian markets were still mostly in green; Shanghai Composite was up by 0.98%, Hang Seng gained 0.19%, Straits Times was up 0.93%, Seoul Composite was up by 0.40% and Taiwan Weighted was trading higher by 0.25%.

On the other hand, Jakarta Composite was down by 0.25%, KLSE Composite was tad lower by 0.03% and Nikkei 225 was down by 0.19%.