Indian equities continue firm trade; Nifty above 5,850 mark

Indian equities continued its firm trade in the late afternoon session but traders were reluctant to take huge position in the derivatives market ahead of Christmas holiday. Traders were seen piling some position in Realty, TECk and IT sector, while selling was witnessed in Oil & Gas, Capital Goods and Bankex sectors. The market may remain volatile this week as traders may roll over positions in F&O segment from near month contract i.e. December 2012 series to next month contract i.e. January 2013 series. In the scrip specific development, Kingfisher Airlines is locked in upper circuit limit after chief executive Sanjay Agarwal today met the aviation regulator, the Director General of Civil Aviation, and submitted a revival plan for the airline. State Bank of India (SBI) was trading in green after the bank and Russian sovereign wealth fund RDIF came out with a plan to set up $2 billion investment consortium aimed at promoting mutual investments between the two countries. Mphasis is trading under pressure after foreign brokerage firm Goldman Sachs came out with the report maintaining its neutral view on the stock. Maruti Suzuki India was trading in red on concerns about the sales outlook of the company.  The market will remain close tomorrow on Tuesday i.e. December 25, 2012 on account of ‘Christmas’.

On the global front, most of the Asian markets were trading in green while the European markets were trading on mixed note. The former president of the European Central Bank, Jean-Claude Trichet, stated that ballooning central bank balance sheets across the US, Europe, the UK and Japan are profoundly abnormal. The Bank of England’s balance sheet topped 20% of annual gross domestic product (GDP) in the first quarter of 2012, and was roughly four times larger than at the start of 2007, Trichet added. Back home, the NSE Nifty and BSE Sensex were trading above their psychological 5,850 and 19,200 levels respectively. The market breadth on BSE was positive in the ratio of 1395:1319 while 138 scrips remain unchanged.

The BSE Sensex is currently trading at 19279.19, up by 37.19 points or 0.19% after trading in a range of 19347.64 and 19260.41. There were 18 stocks advancing against 12 declines on the index.

The broader indices were too trading in green; the BSE Mid cap and Small cap index were trading up by 0.43% and 0.48% respectively.

 The top gaining sectoral indices on the BSE were, Realty up by 1.05%, TECk up by 1.02%, IT up by 0.98%, Auto up by 0.93% and Health Care up by 0.92%. While, Oil & Gas down by 0.61%, Capital Goods down by 0.12%, Bankex down by 0.10%, PSU down by 0.04% and Metal down by 0.04% were the only losers on the index.

The top gainers on the Sensex were Tata Motors up by 3.32%, Sun Pharma up by 1.62%, Wipro up by 1.42%, Infosys up by 1.29% and Tata Power up by 1.23%.  On the flip side, ONGC down by 1.95%, Jindal Steel was down by 1.64%, Maruti Suzuki down by 1.55%, Reliance Industries down by 0.61% and ICICI Bank down by 0.52% were the top losers on the Sensex.

Meanwhile, the Union Minister of Commerce Industry and Textiles, Anand Sharma at the 5th meeting of the Government-Industry Joint Task Force, expressed concern over the trade performance as exports in April-November 2012 declined by 5.9% to $ 189.2 billion and assured the Industry that measure to support exporters will be announced by December 24.

He stated that the slowdown in manufacturing has huge implications in terms of employment and social cohesion and industry has voiced its concern including cost of manufacturing, weak disbursement of credit and high transaction costs. Further stating, the minister said that he intends to hold the 1st meeting of the Manufacturing Industry Promotion Board in the near future to review the state of this very critical sector as well as the progress in the implementation of the National Manufacturing Policy. Commerce minister pointed out that the nature of manufacturing, changes to more capital intensive manufacturing, the rate of growth to sustain employment would have to be at least 12%-15%. 

On SEZ policy Anand Sharma said that to make this policy more attractive the department is in the process to finalisation of the revised SEZ policy in consultation with the ministry of finance and hoped that before the next Budget, the ministry will be able to announce the changes. The Minister pointed out that the Government has taken some concrete measures for reviving the investment sentiments, both domestic and foreign front like FDI in multi brands retail upto 51% while stipulating that at least half of the investment will go for creating backend infrastructure.

The S&P CNX Nifty is currently trading at 5,856.05, up by 8.35 points or 0.14% after trading in a range of 5,871.90 and 5,848.30. There were 33 stocks advancing against 17 declines on the index.

The top gainers of the Nifty were Tata Motors up by 3.32%, DLF up by 1.94%, Sun Pharma up by 1.59%, Wipro up by 1.42% and Tata Power up by 1.27%.

On the flip side, ONGC down by 2.05%, Jindal Steel down by 1.77%, Maruti Suzuki down by 1.65%, Ultra Cement down by 1.48% and Grasim Industries down by 1.09% were the major losers on the index.

Most Asian equity indices were trading in green; Shanghai Composite was up 0.27%, Hang Seng and Straits Times advanced 0.16%, while KOSPI Composite was up by 0.07%. On the flip side, KLSE Composite declined 0.15% and Taiwan Weighted slid 0.06%, were the losers amongst Asian pack.

Meanwhile, Japanese and Indonesian markets remain closed on Monday for public holidays.

The European markets were trading on a mixed note with, France’s CAC 40 gain 0.05%, Germany’s DAX descended 0.47% while the United Kingdom’s FTSE 100 ascended 0.11%.