Domestic indices remain in green afternoon session

Domestic equity indices remained in green and were trading marginally higher in afternoon session on account of buying in Sun Pharma, Power Grid, and Maruti Suzuki stocks. Traders were getting encouragement as the Reserve Bank of India Governor Shaktikanta Das said India's gross domestic product growth could be above 7% for 2022-23. He noted that almost all high-frequency indicators monitored by the central showed that momentum was sustained in the final quarter of the last financial year and it would not be a surprise if India's economy grows at a rate higher than 7%. The sentiments were further supported by Indian rupee appreciating 10 paise to 82.74 against the dollar at the Interbank Foreign Exchange on increased selling of the US currency by exporters and banks.

On the global front, Asian markets were trading lower following negative cues from US markets overnight. Concerns over U.S. debt ceiling deadlock weighed on the sentiment. Back home, almost all the sectoral indices on BSE were trading into positive territory; however, stocks from Metal counter was the only exception. Stocks from Consumer Durables, Healthcare, Power, Utilities and Realty were the prominent gainers of the session. In the stock specific development, Deepak Nitrite  moved higher after the company announced Rs 5,000 crore capex plan in Gujarat. 

The BSE Sensex is currently trading at 62056.37, up by 74.58 points or 0.12% after trading in a range of 61730.53 and 62154.14. There were 16 stocks advancing against 14 stocks declining on the index.

The broader indices were trading in green; the BSE Mid cap index was up by 0.45%, while Small cap index up by 0.48%.

The top gaining sectoral indices on the BSE were Consumer Durables up by 1.47%, Healthcare up by 0.72%, Power up by 0.57%, Utilities up by 0.55% and Realty up by 0.47%, while Metal down by 0.08% was only losing indices on BSE.

The top gainers on the Sensex were Sun Pharma up by 2.08%, Power Grid up by 1.24%, Maruti Suzuki up by 1.01%, Titan up by 0.81% and ITC up by 0.69%. On the flip side, Indusind Bank down by 0.69%, Tata Motors down by 0.57%, HDFC down by 0.41%, HDFC Bank down by 0.39% and Mahindra & Mahindra down by 0.26% were the top losers.

Meanwhile, the SBI's research report 'Ecowrap' has said that the withdrawal of Rs 2000 currency note is likely to be a non-event but it will have a favourable bearing on liquidity, bank deposits and interest rates. It expects that almost the entire amount of Rs 3.6 lakh crore in the form of Rs 2000 will come back to the banking system (the report assumes 10-15 per cent of the total Rs 2000 notes are in currency chests). 

Ecowrap said ‘decoding exchange/deposit dynamics, we understand, banks will already be holding some of these notes in their currency chests, thus the impact on deposits will be limited. It further said in digital payments, India has been witnessing new milestones, in both value and volume terms, which indicate the robustness of its payment ecosystem and acceptance by a wide stratum of consumers. It said ‘if we look at the 'total digital payments' per cent of nominal GDP, it has increased to 767 per cent in FY23 from 668 per cent in FY16’.

According to the report, the retail digital payments (excluding RTGS) as per cent of GDP reached 242 per cent in FY23 from 129 per cent in FY16. Among all, UPI has emerged as the most popular and preferred payment mode in India pioneering Person to Person (P2P) as well as Person to Merchant (P2M) transactions in India accounting for about 73 per cent of the total digital payments. The volume of UPI transactions has increased multi-fold from 1.8 crore in FY17 to 8375 crore in FY23. 

The CNX Nifty is currently trading at 18358.10, up by 10.10 points or 0.06% after trading in a range of 18269.70 and 18392.60. There were 30 stocks advancing against 18 stocks declining on the index.

The top gainers on Nifty were Sun Pharma up by 1.87%, Power Grid Corp up by 1.24%, HDFC Life Insurance up by 1.15%, Maruti Suzuki up by 1.11% and Dr. Reddy's Lab up by 1.05%. On the flip side, Adani Enterprises down by 4.74%, Adani Ports down by 2.58%, Divi's Lab down by 1.25%, Hindalco down by 0.97% and Indusind Bank down by 0.71% were the top losers.

All Asian markets were trading lower, Taiwan Weighted lost 28.71 points or 0.18% to 16,159.32, Hang Seng declined 244.34 points or 1.26% to 19,186.91, Shanghai Composite weakened 29.19 points or 0.9% to 3,217.05, KOSPI dropped 2.8 points or 0.11% to 2,564.75, Jakarta Composite plunged 7.78 points or 0.12% to 6,728.90, Straits Times fell 8.16 points or 0.25% to 3,209.92 and Nikkei 225 slipped 275.09 points or 0.9% to 30,682.68.