Benchmarks continue to trade in green ahead of RBI’s policy announcement

Indian benchmarks- Sensex, Nifty were trading over 0.15% in the late morning session on sustained buying by participants on interest rate cut hopes by Reserve Bank of India on Tuesday and better-than-expected corporate earnings. On the global front, most of the Asian equity indices were trading in the green at this point of time with Chinese Shanghai Composite surging over one and a half percent amid a relatively positive earnings outlook. Back home, the traders were seen piling up position in Realty, Auto and IT while selling was seen in Oil & Gas, Power and Metal sectors. In scrip specific development, Jet Airways surged on hopes that a deal with Etihad may be announced today. Maruti Suzuki India gained after the company has stated that third quarter profit more than doubled. Tyre maker CEAT soared on signing joint venture agreement with A K Khan & Company, a leading business house of Bangladesh, for setting up a bias automotive tyre manufacturing facility in Bangladesh. Godrej Consumer Products was trading in green after inking pact with private equity firm Creador to divest its non-core food business in Indonesia for an undisclosed amount. Reliance Industries slipped on report that Defence Ministry has classified oil & major and its partner BP Plc's KG-D6 gas fields and gas discovery area NEC-25 as 'No-Go' areas.

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 1250:773.

The BSE Sensex is currently trading at 20141.89 up by 38.36 points or 0.19% after trading in a range of 20172.45 and 20107.82. There were 20 stocks advancing against 10 declines on the index.

The broader indices were trading in green; the BSE Mid cap index was up by 0.42% and Small cap index was up by 0.70%.

The top gaining sectoral indices on the BSE were, Realty up by 1.38%, Auto up by 1.29%, IT up by 0.72%, Teck up by 0.61%, Bankex up by 0.58%. While, Oil & Gas down by 0.64%, Power down by 0.03%, Metal down by 0.02% and FMCG down by 0.02% were the few losers on the index.

The top gainers on the Sensex were Mahindra & Mahindra up by 2.05%, Maruti Suzuki up by 1.80%, Hero MotoCorp up by 1.75%, Gail India up by 1.50% and Cipla up by 1.46%.

On the flip side, RIL was down by 1.09%,ONGC was down by 0.82%, NTPC was down by 0.82%, Hindustan Unilever  was down by 0.77% and Sun Pharma was down by 0.64% were the top losers on the Sensex.

Meanwhile, to ensure parity in the price of imported and locally-produced gas, the Union Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas will soon bring in a Uniform Gas Price Policy. The Union Minister for Petroleum and Natural Gas M Veerappa Moily said 'I have worked out the policy, but don't know whether it has to go to the Cabinet or not. The proposed policy will ensure one price for gas that is imported and that is produced here as imported gas currently costs high'.

Moily said that the gas price depends on the country from where it is imported. In Qatar it is a little less ($18), other countries it is $21, while, shale gas may work out very cheap. He pointed out that India might achieve self-sufficiency in gas by 2016-17.

On New Exploration Licensing Policy (NELP), Moily said that 40 oil and gas blocks have been approved under the NELP and the contractors, including our own PSUs, have taken them. However, defence, environment and some other departments raised some objection and wanted the No-Objection Certificate withdrawn.

Nearly $13 billion has been invested in those projects and is left to the Cabinet to decide whether or not to clear them. By adding further, Moily said that the implementation of the NELP will help us to ease out the situation in which some of the projects are facing obstacles. He said 'may be in June, two MMSCMD (metric million standard cubic metres per day) gas of ONGC will be available.

The S&P CNX Nifty is currently trading at 6,083.65 up by 9.00 points or 0.15% after trading in a range of 6,088.40 and 6,072.35. There were 30 stocks advancing against 19 declines while 1 stock remained unchanged on the index.

The top gainers of the Nifty were HCL Tech up by 2.44%, Cairn up by 1.98%, DLF up by 1.85%, Maruti Suzuki up by 1.84% and Ranbaxy Laboratories up by 1.76%.

On the flip side, Reliance Industries down by 1.12%, Sun Pharmaceuticals down by 1.10%, BPCL down by 1.10%, HUL down by 1.08%, and Reliance infra down by 1.00% were the major losers on the index.

Most of the Asian equity indices were trading in green; Shanghai Composite surged 37.41 points or 1.63% to 2,328.71, Hang Seng rose 109.00 points or 0.46% to 23,689.43, Straits Times added 6.59 points or 0.20% to 3,275.90 and Taiwan Weighted was up by 21.93 points or 0.29% to 7,694.51.

On the flip side, Jakarta Composite declined 18.17 points or 0.41% to 4,419.43, Nikkei 225 slipped 78.74points or 0.72% to 10,847.91 and KOSPI Composite was down by 6.55 points or 0.34% to 1,940.14.