Benchmarks trade near day’s high; Nifty reclaims 5600 mark

Gaining steadily, frontline equity indices have spurted at day’s high level on continued buying activity, mainly on the back of supportive cues from global peers. Besides, gains from Metal, Realty and Capital Goods counters also aided benchmarks in resuming their positive momentum after slipping to intraday low level in late morning deals. Gaining additional ground, benchmark 50 share index, NIfty re-conquered its crucial 5600 mark, with barometer 30 share index, Sensex too, coming at sniffing distance of psychological 18600 mark. Broader indices, meanwhile, continued to outperform larger counterparts.

On the global front, Asian pacific shares continued to trade firm, with the Japanese market hitting a fresh multiyear high and Chinese and Australian shares too staging positive trend on lower-than-expected inflation in the mainland. Additionally, European shares, adding to previous session’s gains, made a positive opening as a strong start of the US earnings season and benign Chinese inflation data lifted investor sentiment.

Closer home, stocks from Information Technology (IT), Oil & Gas counters were a chink in armor. Decline of country's No. 3 software services provider, Wipro in the first trading session in the IT pack after the company hived off its other businesses into a separate unit, mainly rubbed the pessimism across other IT stocks. Additionally, appreciation of Indian currency too weighed on the software providers that derive lion shares of their revenue through exports. The overall market breadth on BSE was in the favour of advances which thumped declines in the ratio of 1206:797, while 110 shares remained unchanged.

The BSE Sensex is currently trading at 18551.10, up by 113.32 points or 0.61% after trading in a range of 18565.56 and 18436.61. There were 22 stocks advancing against 8 declines on the index.

The broader indices too added ground; the BSE Mid cap and Small cap indices were trading higher by 0.71% and 0.70% respectively.

The top gaining sectoral indices on the BSE were Capital Goods up by 1.76%, Metal up by 1.72%, Bankex up by 1.57%, Auto up by 1.44% and Realty up by 1.34%, while, IT down by 0.53%, Teck down by 0.45%, and FMCG down by 0.02% were the losers on the BSE.

The top gainers on the Sensex were Jindal Steel up by 3.19%, ICICI Bank up by 2.95%, Tata Motors up by 2.74%, L&T up by 2.63% and Tata Steel up by 2.06%. On the flip side, Wipro down by 10.58%, Bharti Airtel was down by 1.14%, Dr Reddys Lab was down by 1.02% , ONGC and HUL down by 0.56% were the top losers on the Sensex.

Meanwhile, expressing hope that problems related to infrastructure projects will be solved soon, the Planning Commission Deputy Chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia said, the mega infrastructure projects, which are stuck due to regulatory clearances - will be resolved within 5-6 weeks.

By adding further he said, the only way to solve such problems is to address them at political levels, adding that the CCI has dealt with environmental related issues and several projects have moved forward. As per Ahulwalia, various projects are stuck because a number of regulatory clearances are now subject to so much public scrutiny, thereby making it difficult for bureaucratic system to respond.

Concerned over the growing number of stalled projects, the government had set up the high-powered CCI, under Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, to clear the bottlenecks holding back mega projects. Currently, over 340 projects, including 125 new projects, are held up for some reason. Further, CCI is expected to ease stringent conditions imposed by Defence Ministry for oil and gas blocks.  

The government has identified the development of infrastructure as a most critical condition to boost the economy’s growth. The pace of development in the infrastructure sector lingers to a great extent on the investments made and timely execution of the projects. For the 12th Five Year Plan (2012-17), the government has set the $1-trillion investment target for the infrastructure sector. 

The CNX Nifty is currently trading at 5,602.05, up by 59.10 points or 1.07% after trading in a range of 5,602.80 and 5,558.45. There were 42 stocks advancing against 8 declines on the index.

The top gainers of the Nifty were IDFC up by 3.94%, Cairn up by 3.38%, Ambuja Cements up by 3.21%, Jindal Steel up by 3.15% and Axis Bank up by 2.99%. On the flip side, Bharti Airtel down by 1.10%, Dr Reddys Lab down by 0.86%, ONGC down by 0.72%, Hindustan Unilever down by 0.52% and Asian Paints down by 0.31% were the major losers on the index.

Most of the Asian equity indices were trading in green; Shanghai Composite rose 0.50%, Hang Seng surged 0.89%, Jakarta Composite increased 0.20%, KLSE Composite added 0.07%, KOSPI Composite gained 0.11% and Straits Times was up by 0.61%. On the flip side, Taiwan Weighted was down by 0.31%,Nikkei 225 was trading flat with negative bias.