Benchmarks hold early gains; Metals, Consumer Durables lead

Indian benchmarks- Sensex, Nifty were trading over 0.24% in the late morning session on fresh buying by funds and retail investors on firm Asian cues. Sentiment got support by US services sector expansion, which extended in January and a few corporate results. Investors are cautious ahead of the 2013/14 budget to be unveiled later this month, which is seen as a key test of commitments to shore up finance. On the global front, most of the Asian equity indices are trading in the green terrain in Wednesday’s late morning deals following firm close on Wall Street overnight. Japanese market, garnering over three percent gains, has surged near its four year high after Bank of Japan Governor Masaaki Shirakawa said that he will step down on March 19, three weeks before his term was due to expire, that may help Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s campaign for aggressive easing. Back home, the traders were seen piling up position in Metal, Consumer Durables and Realty. Further, Sugar stocks such as Rana Sugars, Bajaj Hindustan, Dhampur Sugar Mills, Sakthi Sugars, Balrampur Chini Mills, Shree Renuka Sugars and EID Parry (India) edged higher on report that the food ministry has decided to seek Cabinet approval to lift controls on sugar. In scrip specific development, Kotak Mahindra Bank surged on acquiring the business loans portfolio from Barclays Bank PLC, India branch and Barclays Investment and Loan (India). NTPC was under pressure on report that the government has decided to sell about 9.5% stake in the company via Offer for Sale route on February 7, 2013. The NSE Nifty and BSE Sensex were managing to hold their psychological 5950 and 19,700 levels respectively.

The market breadth on BSE was positive; advances: declines in the ratio of 1349:711.

The BSE Sensex is currently trading at 19707.36 up by 47.54 points or 0.24% after trading in a range of 19767.25 and 19692.91. There were 22 stocks advancing against 8 declines on the index.

The broader indices were trading in green; the BSE Mid cap index was up by 0.24% and Small cap index was up by 0.76%.

The top gaining sectoral indices on the BSE were, Metal up by 1.20%, Consumer Durables up by 1.03%, Realty up by 0.91%, TECk up by 0.54% and Health Care up by 0.49% while, there were no losers in the space.

The top gainers on the Sensex were Maruti Suzuki up by 1.90%, Tata Steel up by 1.75%, Jindal Steel up by 1.34%, HDFC up by 1.27% and Sterlite Inds up by 1.21%.

On the flip side, NTPC was down by 1.57%, Hindustan Unilever was down by 1.38%, Hero MotoCorp was down by 0.74%, HDFC Bank was down by 0.70%, and RIL was down by 0.46% and were the top losers on the Sensex.

Meanwhile, in a move to contain the fiscal deficit to 5.3 percent of GDP for the current fiscal, Finance Minister P. Chidambaram has urged the revenue department to take extra efforts to meet the budgeted indirect tax collection target for this fiscal. The Government has set an indirect tax collection target of Rs 5.05 lakh crore for 2012-13. In April-November 2012, indirect tax collections grew by 16.8 per cent to Rs 2.92 lakh crore.

While addressing a Central Board of Excise and Customs event, Chidambaram said “this has been a difficult year for tax collections, too as the economy slowed down, imports also slowed down, manufacturing too was subdued and therefore, collections have been affected”.

Chidambaram has asked the revenue department to focus more on shifting to a technology-driven regime for tax collection instead of following a rough approach. To avoid litigation in tax collection, finance minister has told the revenue department to adopt a non-adversarial approach for tax administration.    

Further, finance minister emphasized relying more on non-intrusive intelligence gathering, technology and non-adversarial tax administration to assure that revenues will be collected in a “just and fair” manner.

The S&P CNX Nifty is currently trading at 5,974.95 up by 18.05 points or 0.30% after trading in a range of 5,990.90 and 5,967.70. There were 39 stocks advancing against 10 declines while 1 stock remained unchanged on the index.

The top gainers of the Nifty were Bank of Baroda up by 2.77%, UltraTech Cement up by 2.11%, IDFC up by 2.09%, Maruti Suzuki up by 2.08% and Sesa Goa up by 1.77%.

On the flip side, NTPC down by 1.45%, Hindustan Unilever down by 1.40%, Siemens down by 0.86%, HDFC Bank down by 0.85% and Hero Moto Co down by 0.82%, were the major losers on the index.

Most of the Asian equity indices were trading in the green; Hang Seng surged 159.96 points or 0.69% to 23,307.89, Jakarta Composite rose 12.47 points or 0.28% to 4,491.92, Nikkei 225 soared 438.60 points or 3.97% to 11,485.52, Taiwan Weighted added 25.27 points or 0.32% to 7,912.21 and Straits Times up 2.18 points or 0.06% to 3,274.65. On the flip side, Shanghai Composite dipped 1.27 points or 0.05% to 2,431.86 and KLSE Composite was down by 14.53 points or 0.89% to 1,619.65 and KOSPI Composite was down by 1.20 points or 0.06% to 1,936.98.