Benchmarks hold early gains; Oil & Gas, PSU lead

Indian benchmarks- Sensex, Nifty were trading over 0.55% in the late morning session on sustained buying in ONGC and RIL as government has virtually deregulated diesel prices. On the global front, most of the Asian equity indices were trading in the green as Chinese fourth quarter growth data came out slightly better than expected. Back home, the traders were seen piling up position in Oil & Gas, PSU and CG while selling was seen in Auto, TECk and IT sectors. Oil and gas sector edged higher after the Oil Marketing Companies (OMCs) hiked diesel price by 45 paise excluding taxes effective January 18, 2013. While the base hike in diesel price being 45 paise, it would lead to an increase of 51 paise in Delhi after including local VAT. New rate for diesel now stands at Rs 47.66 a litre. In scrip specific development, MTNL jumped after launching Video Telephony Service for Delhi and Mumbai. GVK Power & Infrastructure trading under pressure on reporting that the NSE has decided to remove company from futures & options trading. Hero MotoCorp was trading in red after the company reported lower-than-expected Oct-Dec earnings on Thursday. The NSE Nifty and BSE Sensex were managing to hold their psychological 6,000 and 20,000 levels respectively.

The market breadth on BSE was positive; advances: declines in the ratio of 1208:911.

The BSE Sensex is currently trading at 20086.46 up by 122.43 points or 0.61% after trading in a range of 20126.55 and 20037.23. There were 18 stocks advancing against 12 declines on the index.

The broader indices were trading in green; the BSE Mid cap index was up by 0.41% and Small cap index was up by 0.21%.

The top gaining sectoral indices on the BSE were, Oil & Gas up by 3.33%, PSU up by 2.94%, CG up by 1.01%, Bankex up by 0.76% and Metal up by 0.52%. While, Auto down by 1.01%, TECk down by 0.55%, IT down by 0.51% and Health Care down by 0.03% were the top losers on the index.

The top gainers on the Sensex were ONGC up by 8.24%, Gail India up by 3.48%, Maruti Suzuki up by 3.21%, SBI up by 1.69% and L&T up by 1.62%.

On the flip side, Hero MotoCorp was down by 4.67%, Wipro was down by 4.44%, Mahindra & Mahindra was down by 3.39%, Hindustan Unilever was down by 1.73% and Bharti Airtel was down by 1.19% were the top losers on the Sensex.

Meanwhile, buoyed by better-than-expected performance by the IT services companies in India, industry body Nasscom expects FY14 to be a better year for the industry as compared to FY13. As per Nasscom, uncertainties still continue in some of the markets including India and the customers are cautious and will remain cautious. However, the good thing is that the worst is getting over with countries taking various measures.

Recently, the government concerned about the impact of the global financial crisis on the Indian economy has taken a number of steps to spur the economic growth including FDI in retail and partial deregulation of diesel prices in a move to contain the surging fiscal deficit.

Earlier, Nasscom had given a growth projection of 11-14% for FY13, which it subsequently revisited saying that it was expecting the industry to meet the lower end of the guidance. Further, the industry body will announce its annual guidance for FY14 in the second week of February after assessing the performance of the IT companies in the Q3. 

The S&P CNX Nifty is currently trading at 6,074.85 up by 35.65 points or 0.59% after trading in a range of 6,083.40 and 6,059.20. There were 29 stocks advancing against 21 declines on the index.

The top gainers of the Nifty were ONGC up by 8.62%, BPCL up by 8.61%, Maruti Suzuki up by 3.45%, GAIL up by 3.45%, and Cairn up by 1.87%.

On the flip side, Hero MotoCorp down by 4.58%, Wipro down by 4.40%, Mahindra & Mahindra down by 3.44%, HUL down by 1.46% and ACC down by 1.39%, were the major losers on the index.

Most of the Asian equity indices were trading in green; Shanghai Composite rose 12.78 points or 0.56% to 2,297.69, Hang Seng surged 185.51 points or 0.79% to 23,525.27, Jakarta Composite soared 42.33 points or 0.96% to 4,440.71, Nikkei 225 jumped 263.45 points or 2.49% to 10,853.39, Straits Times increased 9.31 points or 0.29% to 3,205.54, KOSPI Composite added 3.89 points or 0.20% to 1,978.15 and Taiwan Weighted was up by 85.42 points or 1.13% to 7,702.42

KLSE Composite was down 3.18 points or 0.19% to 1,677.91.