Benchmarks pare losses; trade marginally in green

Indian equities have pared losses and are trading in green in the late morning session on fresh buying by funds and retail investors. Market participants have remained cautious over domestic political instability and ahead of the ending of the financial year 2012-13. On the global front, Most of the Asian equity indices were trading in green. On the flip side the Chinese Shanghai remained the top loser among its regional peers losing about one and a half percent, dragged by slump in brokerages and material producers.

Back home, the traders were seen piling up positions in FMCG, Consumer Durables and Metal while selling was seen in, Oil & Gas, Realty and Capital Goods sector. In scrip specific actions, Future Retail gained after the company has agreed to sell a stake in its general insurance business to L&T General Insurance Company. Colgate Palmolive slipped after its board approved the selling of a division to Colgate Global Business Services for Rs 59.89 crore. Mahindra Satyam dropped as merger with Tech Mahindra gets extended.

Meanwhile, the NSE Nifty and BSE Sensex were trading just above their psychological 5600 and 18,700 levels respectively.

The market breadth on BSE was showing negative trend with advances to declines in ratio of 917: 955.

The BSE Sensex is currently trading at 18714.54, up by 33.12 points or 0.18% after trading in a range of 18716.92 and 18612.37. There were 13 stocks advancing against 16 declines on the index.

The broader indices were trading in red; the BSE Mid cap index was down by 0.09% and Small cap index was down by 0.01%.

The top gaining sectoral indices on the BSE were FMCG up by 1.01%, Consumer Durables up by 0.39%, Metal up by 0.35% , TECK up by 0.32%  and Health Care up by 0.19% while, Oil & Gas down by 1.01%, Realty down by 0.63%, Capital Goods down by 0.57% and  PSU down by 0.01% were the losers on the BSE. The top gainers on the Sensex were Coal India up by 2.20%, Bharti Airtel up by 1.87%, Hindustan Unilever up by 1.42%, ITC up by 1.37%, HDFC up by 1.22%.

On the flip side, Gail India was down by 3.07%, RIL was down by 1.53%, Tata Steel was down by 1.51%, ONGC was down by 1.12% and L&T was down by 0.88% were the top losers on the Sensex

Meanwhile, India’s current account deficit (CAD) for 2012-13 is expected to be around 5% of the GDP, as per the Prime Minister's Economic Advisory Council (PMEAC) Chairman C Rangarajan. He expressed his hopes that on the back of improvement seen in exports in the last few months, CAD will likely come down in the fourth quarter of the current financial year, ending March 31, though third quarter data will be higher, which is due to be released at month-end.

Trade deficit for the month February has also fallen to 10-month low of $14.9 billion, mainly on improving exports and a sharp drop in imports. CAD, the difference between inflows and outflows of foreign currency, had touched a record high of 5.4% of GDP in the July-September quarter.

Further, expressing hope that the capital flows would be adequate to cover the CAD, Rangarajan said ‘there could be periods of mismatches in capital flows. But for the year as a whole, capital flows would be adequate. I do believe that the capital flows next year would be adequate to cover the current account deficit

The CNX Nifty is currently trading at 5,639.70 up by 5.85 points or 0.10% after trading in a range of 5,644.80 and 5,612.05. There were 23 stocks advancing against 27 declines on the index.

The top gainers on the Nifty were Ranbaxy up by 2.73%, Coal India up by 2.03%, Bharti Airtel up by 2.01%, HUL up by 1.82% and ITC up by 1.39%.

On the flip side, GAIL down by 3.01%, DLF down by 1.67%, Siemens down by 1.65%, Reliance Infrastructure down by 1.48% and Reliance Industries down by 1.44% were the major losers on the index.

Most of the Asian equity indices were trading in green; Jakarta Composite rose 38.81 points or 0.81% to 4,816.71, KLSE Composite strengthened 7.03 points or 0.43% to 1,650.92, Straits Times increased 6.86 points or 0.19% to 3,274.24, KOSPI Composite added 7.68 points or 0.39% to 1,985.16 and Taiwan Weighted was up by 7.53 points or 0.10% to 7,862.92.

On the flip side, Shanghai Composite tumbled 34.40 points or 1.48% to 2,292.31, Hang Seng declined 96.78 points or 0.43% to 22,154.37 and Nikkei 225 was down by 74.96 points or 0.60% to 12,471.50.