Firm trade prevails; Nifty above 5,800 mark

Indian equity markets added gains to continue firm trade in the late afternoon session on account of buying in frontline counters and taking cues from European counterparts. The sentiments on the street were on optimistic mood after the Congress-led UPA government raised the growth projection for fiscal year 2013-14 and simultaneously lowered the inflation target for Asia’s third-biggest economy. Economic Survey 2012-13, presented by Finance Minister P Chidambaram in the Lok Sabha, stated that India’s economy may grow at 6.1-6.7% for the year 2013-14. Traders were seen piling some position in Capital Goods, Realty and Oil & Gas sector while selling was witnessed in IT and TECk sector.

In the scrip specific development, Kingfisher Airlines continued its lower circuit limit extending the fall on the bourses after government withdrew international bilateral traffic rights and domestic slots of the grounded carrier. The railway-linked stocks have extended their yesterday’s fall with most of them trading at their 52-week lows after no major announcements were made for big ticket projects in the railway budget. Core Education & Technologies slumped on the bourses to their lowest intraday level since April 02, 2009, on unconfirmed fears that shares held by high-net worth individuals are being heavily sold because of margin funding issues.

On the global front, all the Asian markets were trading in green barring Nikkei 225 while the European markets were too trading on optimistic note. Back home, the NSE Nifty and BSE Sensex were trading above their psychological 5,800 and 19,100 levels respectively. The market breadth on BSE was positive in the ratio of 1327:1309 while 123 scrips remain unchanged.

The BSE Sensex is currently trading at 19,187.35, up by 172.21 points or 0.91% after trading in a range of 19,210.08 and 18,997.82. There were 24 stocks advancing against 6 declines on the index.

The broader indices were trading in green; the BSE Mid cap index was up by 0.78% and Small cap index was up by 0.26%.

The top gaining sectoral indices on the BSE were, Capital Goods up by 2.41%, Realty up by 2.13%, Oil & Gas up by 1.71%, PSU up 1.44% and Metal up by 1.25%, while IT down by 0.81% and TECk down by 0.08% were the only losers on the BSE.

The top gainers on the Sensex were Bharti Airtel up by 3.74%, ONGC up by 3.71%, L&T up by 3.43%, M&M up by 2.86% and BHEL up 2.52%.

On the flip side, GAIL India was down by 1.56%, Infosys was down by 1.51%, Tata Motors was down by 0.85%, TCS was down by 0.81% and HDFC Bank was down by 0.66%  were the top losers on the Sensex.

Meanwhile, in a report, the Finance Ministry has revealed that private banks operating in the country have detected and processed the maximum number of fake currency notes in banking channels surpassing both public sector and foreign banks by a huge margin.

For detecting fake currency notes and send such information to the Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU), all banks (private, public and foreign banks) in the country and similar financial intermediaries are mandated, under anti-money laundering laws and other rules related to national security. FIU is the premier intelligence gathering agency for such instances in the country, under the control of the finance Ministry.

The private banks contributed the maximum number of Counterfeit Currency Reports (CCRs) at 3,10,714, to the FIU during 2011-12, while, the public sector banks detected and sent only 2,649 such reports in the same period. Even foreign banks operating in the country sent 9,273 CCR reports, while the other banking intermediaries sent in 4,746 such reports in 2011-12, surpassing the public banks total volume of CCRs by few thousands.  

The public sector banks, which have the largest base of customers and investors in the country, have become a matter of concerns for the agency prompting immediate remedial measures because of their slow pace and low volume of compliance in this regard. In this regard, the FIU has approached the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) to get better results from public banks in this area of utmost concern. 

The CNX Nifty is currently trading at 5,813.75 up by 52.40 points or 0.91% after trading in a range of 5,816.35 and 5,749.70. There were 36 stocks advancing against 14 declines on the index.

The top gainers of the Nifty were JP Associates up by 4.53%, ONGC up by 3.61%, Bharti Airtel up by 3.58%, L&T up by 3.54% and DLF up by 3.14%.

On the flip side, Ranbaxy down by 3.30%, GAIL down by 1.80%, Infosys down by 1.44%, HDFC Bank down by 1.07% and Tata Motors down by 0.95% were the major losers on the index.

All the Asian equity indices were trading in the green; Shanghai Composite rose 0.87%, Hang Seng gained by 0.25%, Jakarta Composite strengthened 1.18%, KLSE Composite added 0.05%, Straits Times jumped 0.33%, KOSPI Composite increased 0.20% and Taiwan Weighted was up by 0.22%. On the flip side, Nikkei 225 was down by 1.27%.

The European markets were trading in green; France’s CAC 40 added 0.54%, Germany’s DAX jumped 0.36% and United Kingdom’s FTSE 100 edged higher by 0.45%.