Sensex, Nifty trade in green

Indian equities gained strength in the late morning session after a few initial jitters on back of global cues. The raid by CBI on DMK leader M K Stalin did not seem to affect investor sentiment adversely - DMK ministers quit UPA government yesterday. On the global front, Asian markets too were trading in fine fettle with Japanese and Chinese benchmarks leading from the front. Growth in China’s vast manufacturing sector picked up in March, a preliminary survey of factory managers showed on Thursday. While, Japanese Nikkei rose to a 4-1/2 year high on expectations of further monetary easing by the Bank of Japan’s new leadership.

Back home, the traders were seen piling up positions in Bankex, Teck and Metal while selling was seen in, Auto, Realty and FMCG sector. In scrip specific actions, ITC declined after the Maharashtra state government in its Budget for 2013-14 presented on Wednesday, raised the rate of tax on cigarettes to 25% from 20%. Steel Authority of India dropped as the Government of India has decided to sell up to 5.82% stake in the company via Offer for Sale through the stock exchanges mechanism tomorrow.

Meanwhile, the NSE Nifty and BSE Sensex were trading just above their psychological 5700 and 18,900 levels respectively. The market breadth on BSE was showing negative trend with advances to declines in ratio of 811: 1240.

The BSE Sensex is currently trading at 18926.98, up by 42.79 points or 0.23% after trading in a range of 18987.48 and 18798.98. There were 18 stocks advancing against 12 declines on the index.

The broader indices were trading in red; the BSE Mid cap index was down by 0.14% and Small cap index was down by 0.29%.

The top gaining sectoral indices on the BSE were Bankex up by 1.03%, Teck up by 0.77%,  Metal up by 0.66%, IT up by 0.28% and Capital Goods up by 0.09% while, Auto down by 1.34%, Realty down by 0.38%, FMCG down by 0.36%, Power down by 0.32% and PSU down by 0.25% were the losers on the BSE.

The top gainers on the Sensex were Bharti Airtel up by 5.21%, ICICI Bank up by 3.79%, Jindal Steel up by 2.68%, HDFC up by 1.65% and Gail India up by 1.35%.

On the flip side, Tata Motors was down by 4.13%, Bajaj Auto was down by 1.41%, NTPC was down by 1.26%,  Maruti Suzuki was down by 1.11%, and Hindustan Unilever was down by 0.83%  were the top losers on the Sensex.

Meanwhile, with the government refusing to give clearances, State-owned Oil and Natural Gas Corp (ONGC) and BG Group might have to surrender three energy blocks in the Krishna-Godavari basin, as the blocks fall within the boundary of a proposed naval base.  Stringent conditions were put for another 32 exploration areas.

The decision was taken at a meeting of the Cabinet Committee on Investment (CCI) on March 20. Of the 39 contentious blocks, 32 got conditional clearance from the Defence Ministry, while there was some differences in the remaining seven. Reliance Industries’ (RIL) KG-D6 block and the gas discovery area, NEC-26, along with most areas where the company had been either barred any oil and gas activity or put stringent conditions on, were among those that got clearance.

The ministry of petroleum and natural gas would consider allotting alternative blocks to the two operators. They would be allowed to recover the cost incurred in these blocks - KG-OSN-2005/1, KG-OSN-2005/2 and KG-DWN-2009/1 - from any other one allotted to them. 

The CNX Nifty is currently trading at 5,717.85 up by 23.45 points or 0.41% after trading in a range of 5,728.80 and 5,670.50. There were 27 stocks advancing against 22 declines while 1 stock remains unchanged on the index.

The top gainers of the Nifty were Bharti Airtel up by 5.61%, ICICI Bank up by 3.94%, Jindal Steel up by 2.93%, Kotak Bank up by 2.02% and Ultra Cement up by 1.89%.

On the flip side, Tata Motors down by 4.08%, NTPC down by 1.40%, Bajaj-Auto down by 1.36%, ACC down by 1.29% and Bank Baroda down by 1.23% were the major losers on the index.

Most of the Asian equity indices were trading in the green; Shanghai Composite rose 9.33 points or 0.40% to 2,326.71, Hang Seng added 0.09 points to 22,276.69, Jakarta Composite increased 5.62 points or 0.12% to 4,837.12, KLSE Composite moved up 1.45 points or 0.09% to 1,632.99, Nikkei 225 surged 145.03 points or 1.17% to 12,614.50, Straits Times jumped 22.59 points or 0.70% to 3,270.99 and Taiwan Weighted was up by 32.05 points or 0.41% to 7,830.08.

On the flip side, KOSPI Composite was down by 5.82 points or 0.30% to 1,953.59.