Benchmarks recoup lost ground; Nifty holds above 5950

Benchmarks bouncing off the lows have recovered modest portion of ground on account of some buying activity thanks to the encouraging trade data, which suggested the country’s February exports rising by 4.25% from a year earlier to $26.3 billion and leaving a narrower trade deficit of $14.9 billion. However, the demand for riskier assets to some extent were curbed by caution after a mixed data from China over the weekend painted a patchy economic recovery in the world's second-largest economy and top consumer for many commodities. Nevertheless, the uptrend of index heavyweight, Reliance Industries, is also doing well for Indian equity markets. Thus, trading near day’s high, Sensex, is trading above the psychological 19700 mark, likewise, Nifty, too is comfortably hovering above its 5950 bastion.

The broader indices, in sync with frontline indices, have lured additional traction. Sectorally, Realty, Capital Goods and Power counters are the top performers of the session, so far, while unrelenting selling pressure is being witnessed in Information Technology and Consumer Durable space.  Besides, shares of telecom companies like Reliance Communications and Tata Teleservices (Maharashtra) gained momentum in trade on Monday. The government has so far received bids worth Rs 3,639 crore from lone bidder Sistema Shyam Teleservices (SSTL) till the second round of the 2G spectrum auction for CDMA services.  The overall market breadth on BSE is in the favour of advances which have thumped declines in the ratio of 1323:1176, while 82 shares remained unchanged.

The BSE Sensex is currently trading at 19742.51, up by 59.28 points or 0.30% after trading in a range of 19754.66 and 19640.38. There were 17 stocks advancing against 13 declines on the index.

The broader indices too gained additional ground; the BSE Mid cap and Small cap indices were trading higher by 0.54% and 0.38% respectively.

The top gaining sectoral indices on the BSE were, Realty up by 1.42%, Capital Goods up by 0.90%, Power up by 0.77%, Health Care up by 0.73% and PSU up by 0.43%, while IT down by 0.46%, TECK down by 0.34%, Consumer Durable down by 0.19% were the losers on the BSE.

The top gainers on the Sensex were Sun Pharma up by 2.46%, HDFC up by 2.43%, Mahindra & Mahindra up by 1.58%, Coal India up by 1.45% and Hindustan Unilever up by 1.15%.

On the flip side, Hero MotoCorp down by 1.22%, Infosys down by 0.72%, Bajaj Auto down by 0.63%, Hindalco Industries and Bharti Airtel  were down by 0.59%, were the top losers on the Sensex.

Meanwhile, in evident proof of subdued income levels, rising cost of petrol amidst sluggish economy weighing on the demand, domestic passenger car sales contracted by 25.71% to 1, 58,513 units in February this year compared to 2, 13,362 units in the same month of 2012. Posting the biggest fall in more than 12 years and the fourth consecutive monthly slide, the industry clearly is now bracing for registering first annual sales fall in a decade.

According to the data released by the Society of Indian Automobile Manufacturers (SIAM), motorcycle sales in last month declined by 4.48% to 8,00,185 units from 8,37,743 units in the same month previous year. Meanwhile, total two-wheeler sales for February 2013 stood at 11, 12,289 units, down by 2.77% from 11, 43,982 units in the corresponding period of previous year.

Besides, the total sales of commercial vehicles declined by 11.06% to 68,388 units from 76,891 units in the year-ago period. Total sales of vehicles across categories too contracted by 5.45% to 14, 51,278 units in February 2013 as against 15, 34,910 units in the same month of 2012.

The CNX Nifty is currently trading at 5,969.80, up by 24.10 points or 0.41% after trading in a range of 5,971.20 and 5,935.65. There were 31 stocks advancing against 18 declines on the index.

The top gainers of the Nifty were Siemens up by 3.85%, HDFC up by 2.63%, Sun Pharma up by 2.47%, Ranbaxy up by 2.08% and DLF up by 2.07%.

On the flip side, Hero MotoCorp down by 1.16%, Infosys down by 0.75%, Bajaj Auto down by 0.73%, kotak Mahindra Bank down by 0.63% and Bharti Airtel down by 0.62% were the major losers on the index.

Asian equity indices were trading in mixed; Hang Seng rose 0.21%, Nikkei 225 strengthened 0.53%, Straits Times increased 0.21% and Taiwan Weighted added 0.29%.

On the flip side, Shanghai Composite slipped 0.46%, KLSE Composite dipped 0.05% and KOSPI Composite was down by 0.13% and Jakarta Composite was down by 0.18%.