Indian equities exhibit volatile trade

Indian markets are exhibiting a volatile trend in the late morning session of trade. On the global front, the Asian equity indices were trading on mixed at this point of time; however, Japanese market witnessed some profit booking after the biggest first day gain of the year. Back home, the traders were seen piling up position in, Auto, Oil & Gas and Health Care while selling was seen in Capital Goods, Realty and Bankex. HPCL, BPCL and Indian Oil Corporation edged higher on reporting that the government has formally started the consultation process for raising diesel and cooking gas prices. Punjab National Bank was trading in green after the bank stated that it has received all regulatory approvals for acquiring 30% stake in Metlife India Insurance. ING Vysya Bank gained after the bank stated that the RBI has approved increasing the investment limit by foreign institutional investors in equity shares of bank. Indraprastha Gas soared on hiking CNG price in Delhi and in the satellite townships of Noida, Greater Noida and Ghaziabad on January 04, 2013. Havells India jumped on entering into a revised trademark license agreement with one of its promoter companies QRG Enterprises, which owns the brand name/ trade mark Havells. The NSE Nifty and BSE Sensex were managing to hold their psychological 6,000 and 19800 levels respectively. The market breadth on BSE was positive, in the ratio of 1519:714.

The BSE Sensex is currently trading at 19815.89 up by 31.81 points or 0.16% after trading in a range of 19856.43 and 19782.91. There were 21 stocks advancing against 9 declines on the index.

The broader indices were trading in green; the BSE Mid cap index was up by 0.82% and Small cap index was up by 1.00%.

The top gaining sectoral indices on the BSE were, Auto up by 1.05%, Oil & Gas up by 0.89%, Health Care up by 0.75%, Consumer Durables up by 0.72%, and TECk up by 0.61% while, Capital Goods down by 0.38%, Realty down by 0.05% and Bankex down by 0.01%  were the top losers on the index.

The top gainers on the Sensex were Maruti Suzuki up by 3.38%, Mahindra & Mahindra up by 1.49%, Hero Moto Corp up by 1.18%, Sun Pharma up by 1.15% and Wipro up by 1.13%. 

On the flip side, L&T was down by 0.96%, HDFC was down by 0.98%, HDFC Bank was down by 0.85%, Hindustan Unilever was down by 0.89% and Jindal Steel was down by 0.28% were the top losers on the Sensex.

Meanwhile, achieving 8.2% growth over the next five years (2012-17) will not be easy and a fresh approach to economic issues is needed to push growth, as per a Planning Commission study. Earlier, the country's apex policy making body - National Development Council (NDC) had already scaled down the average growth target for the 12th Plan to 8% from 8.2% envisaged earlier. The average growth rate was 7.9% in 11th Plan (2007-12).

Further, as per the study, policy options where the government only augments one determinant of growth at a time will not be enough, because the quantum of increase needed will be very high and at times unreasonable.

The Planning panel study also suggested that only a balanced growth path will be plausible and sustainable. New thinking, new efforts and new policies which can be implemented in a time-bound manner will be needed to augment each determinant of growth, in order to achieve the 12th Plan target over the next five years. Further, it added that the policies that led the growth spurt of mid-2000s may have already had its impact.

The economy recorded 9-year low annual economic growth of 6.5 percent in FY12 and it has grown by 5.4 percent in the first half of this fiscal. Meanwhile, Kaushik Basu a senior economist working with the World Bank, also noted that the economic growth in the current fiscal would be less than 6 percent.

The S&P CNX Nifty is currently trading at 6,023.65 up by 7.50 points or 0.12% after trading in a range of 6,042.15 and 6,012.50. There were 29 stocks advancing against 21 declines on the index.

The top gainers of the Nifty were BPCL up by 3.54%, Maruti Suzuki up by 3.42%, Cairn up by 1.81%, Mahindra & Mahindra up by 1.41% and Reliance Infra up by 1.22%.

On the flip side, Hindustan Unilever down by 1.06%, HDFC down by 0.99%, L&T down by 0.98%, UltraTech Cement down by 0.85%, and HDFC Bank down by 0.84% were the major losers on the index.

 The Asian equity indices were trading on mixed; Shanghai Composite rose 2.83 points or 0.12% to 2,279.82, KLSE Composite increased 2.02 points or 0.12% to 1,694.60, Straits Times jumped 2.54 points or 0.08% to 3,227.05 and Jakarta Composite was up by 1.78 points or 0.04% to 4,411.75.

On the flip side, Nikkei 225 declined 48.54 points or 0.45% to 10,640.20, KOSPI Composite slipped 2.59 points or 0.12% to 2,009.45, Taiwan Weighted was down by 54.72 points or 0.70% to 7,751.82 and Hang Seng was down by 9.26 points or 0.04% to 23,321.83.