Bourses trade at day’s high points in late afternoon deals

Trading strength to strength, benchmark equity indices have now soared to day’s high levels ahead of weekly and monthly F&O expiry of April contracts. The overall market breadth was optimistic as 1692 shares were advancing and 1671 were declining, while 115 shares were unchanged on the BSE. In stock specific development, Reliance Industries hit 52 week high on Sensex. Sector wise, chemicals industry remained in focus, as commerce ministry has said chemicals exports have touched $29.3 billion in 2021-22 on account of healthy performance in areas like agrochemicals, dyes and speciality chemicals. India is the sixth-largest producer of chemicals in the world, third in Asia and 14th in exports.

On the global front, all Asian markets were trading higher tracking the Wall Street, which ended overnight on mostly positive, bolstered by the surge in quarterly earnings that shifted focus away from macroeconomic headwinds. The spillover of the earnings-led enthusiasm to the Asian bourses is despite concerns on the impact of the lockdowns in China and the interest rate hardening worldwide. European markets were trading higher tracking the overnight gains in Wall Street and the broad-based recovery in Asian markets.

The BSE Sensex is currently trading at 57664.45, up by 845.06 points or 1.49% after trading in a range of 56936.94 and 57727.02. There were 27 stocks advancing against 3 stocks declining on the index.

The broader indices were trading in green; the BSE Mid cap index gained 0.73%, while Small cap index was up by 0.25%.

The top gaining sectoral indices on the BSE were FMCG up by 2.21%, IT up by 1.54%, Capital Goods up by 1.51%, Power up by 1.49% and Energy was up by 1.44%, while Telecom was down by 0.82% were the only losing indices on BSE.

The top gainers on the Sensex were Hindustan Unilever up by 4.63%, Asian Paints up by 3.63%, Infosys up by 2.79%, Larsen & Toubro up by 2.75% and Power Grid Corp up by 2.64%. On the flip side, Bharti Airtel down by 1.11%, HDFC Bank down by 0.25% and Mahindra & Mahindra down by 0.18% were the top losers.

Meanwhile, with an effort towards holistic socio-economic development of the Street Vendors and their families, the Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs has approved the continuation of lending under the Prime Minister Street Vendor’s AtmaNirbhar Nidhi (PM SVANidhi) beyond March 2022 till December 2024. The Scheme aims to focus on enhanced collateral free affordable loan corpus and increased adoption of digital transactions.

Through the Scheme, affordable collateral-free loans are being facilitated to the Street Vendors. The Scheme had envisaged to facilitate loans for an amount of Rs. 5,000 crore. But this approval has increased the loan amount to Rs. 8,100 crore, thereby providing the Street vendors working capital to further expand their business and making them AtmaNirbhar.

Besides, the budget for promotion of digital payments including cashback to the vendors has also been enhanced. The approval is expected to benefit nearly 1.2 crore citizens of Urban India. The proposed extension of the Scheme has been necessitated as the circumstances that led to the launch of the Scheme in June 2020 i.e. the pandemic and related stress on the small businesses, have not fully retracted.

The extension of lending till December 2024, would assist in institutionalizing the access to formal credit channels, provide an assured source of credit to help them plan their business expansion, increasing the adoption of digital transactions, reducing the impact of potential NPAs on the Lending Institutions and providing holistic socio-economic upliftment for the Street Vendors and their families.

The CNX Nifty is currently trading at 17294.40, up by 256.00 points or 1.50% after trading in a range of 17071.05 and 17301.35. There were 44 stocks advancing against 6 stocks declining on the index.

The top gainers on Nifty were HDFC Life Insurance up by 4.98%, Hindustan Unilever up by 4.47%, Asian Paints up by 3.59%, SBI Life up by 3.24% and UPL up by 3.09%. On the flip side, Bajaj Auto down by 1.77%, Bharti Airtel down by 0.87%, Hindalco down by 0.86%, Adani Ports down by 0.63% and Mahindra & Mahindra down by 0.28% were the top losers.

All Asian markets were trading higher, Nikkei 225 surged 461.27 points or 1.75% to 26,847.90, Hang Seng increased 329.81 points or 1.65% to 20,276.17, Taiwan Weighted strengthened 116.03 points or 0.71% to 16,419.38, Jakarta Composite soared 32.15 points or 0.45% to 7,228.91, KOSPI rose 28.43 points or 1.08% to 2,667.49, Shanghai Composite gained 17.20 points or 0.58% to 2,975.48 and Straits Times was up by 16.61 points or 0.5% to 3,337.28.

European markets were trading higher, UK’s FTSE 100 increased 66.78 points or 0.9% to 7,492.39, France’s CAC increased 127.02 points or 1.97% to 6,572.28 and Germany’s DAX was up by 268.04 points or 1.94% to 14,061.98.