Post Session: Quick Review

The start of the F&O expiry week remained positive, with benchmark equity indices vehemently rallying close to a percent on Monday. Building on previous session’s gains, local equity markets remained in ecstatic mood for the entire session, wherein every dip was reciprocated with equal degree of buying. The show once again was led by rate sensitive stocks, which rallied mainly on account of rate cut hopes by RBI in its May 3 meet. Hectic buying activity by funds and retail investors on the back of supportive global cues too drove the markets. By the end of the trade, benchmark 30 share index, Sensex added triple digit gains to conclude above the psychological 19,100 mark, with Nifty, notching up over 50 points to shut shop above the crucial 5800 level. Meanwhile, broader indices, outperforming the frontline equity indices, puffed up gains of over a percent.

On the global front, European shares were in positive terrain, tracing gains in Asia, boosted by the fact that the Group of 20 (G20) appeared to endorse Japan's stimulus plans. Group refrained from criticizing Japan's stimulus program, giving the Bank of Japan the green signal to go ahead with its currency depreciation plan. Meanwhile, European shares also rose after Italy re-elected its president, thereby easing a two month old political crisis.

Closer home, phenomenal session of trade was despite the stormy start of the parliament as members from various parties forced adjournment of Lok Sabha on various issues, including heckling of Mamata Banerjee, incidents of rapes and demand for separate Telangana. Meanwhile, in the extraordinary session of trade with across the board buying, technology stocks remained the only pressure points. Fall of Wipro by a whopping 8%, mainly weighed on IT pivotal. The stocks plummeted on providing weaker-than-expected quarterly sales forecast on Friday. Wipro reported 16.73% increase in net profit to Rs 1,728.7 crore for the fourth quarter ended March 31, 2013 as against Rs 1,480.9 crore in the year-ago period. Disappointment crept in when the company said that it expects revenues from its IT services business to be in the range of $ 1.575-1.610 billion for the first quarter (April-June) of the current fiscal. Meanwhile, Ultratech Cement too led to some disappointment. Company’s stocks plunged by over 2.5% on reporting 16% fall in Q4 net profit at Rs 726.2 crore as compared to Rs 867.32 crore for the quarter ended March 31, 2012. On the other hand, investors lapped up banking stocks ahead of their quarterly results, with hopes of a rate cut by the Reserve Bank of India at its policy meet next month.  HDFC Bank traded near records high level ahead of its Q4 (January-March) results due tomorrow. The market breadth on the BSE ended positive; advances and declining stocks were in a ratio of 1388: 1004, while 140 scrips remained unchanged. (Provisional)

The BSE Sensex gained 183.26 points or 0.96% to settle at 19199.72.The index touched a high and a low of 19204.90 and 18989.78respectively. 20 stocks were up, while 10 stocks declined on the index. (Provisional)

The BSE Mid cap and Small cap indices ended higher by 1.57% and 0.94% respectively. (Provisional)

On the BSE Sectoral front, Consumer Durables up by 3.95%, Capital Goods up by 3.55%, Realty up by 3.26%, Bankex up by 2.89% and Metal up by 2.24% were the top gainers, while IT down by 2.32% and Teck down by 1.21% were the only losers in the space. (Provisional)

The top gainers on the Sensex were Coal India up by 4.33%, L&T up by 2.41%, HDFC Bank up by 3.85%,  BHEL up by 3.04% and Tata Steel up by 2.27%, while, Wipro down by 7.95%, Infosys down by 2.22%, ONGC down by 1.84%, TCS down by 1.75% and Bajaj Auto down by 1.67% were the top losers in the index. (Provisional)

Meanwhile, a big disappointment to the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), a government panel has turned down the RBI proposal to limit FII investments in the secondary market, citing that foreign investments play important role in propping up the economy. During the April-January period of the current fiscal, FDI into India declined by 39% to $19.10 billion due to global economic uncertainties.

The recently formed panel chaired by Department of Economic Affairs Secretary Arvind Mayaram and attended by the DIPP Secretary, Chief Economic Advisor Rahguram Rajan and RBI officials decided not to place any restriction of this kind as of now in view of the state of capital market.

Earlier, the RBI proposed that any investment over and above 24 percent made by a foreign institutional investor (FII) in an Indian investee company should comply with all the extant of foreign direct investment (FDI) guidelines as regards pricing and entry point conditions. However, Finance Minister P Chidamabaram in his Budget speech, had proposed to follow the international practice with regard to defining FDI and FII, which says that foreign investment of 10 percent or less in a company is treated as FII and if more than 10 percent, the investment is treated as FDI.

Foreign investment is considered crucial for economic development of a country and to attract maximum foreign investment into the country, the government has been liberalizing the foreign investment policy and is keen to promote foreign investments to bridge the widening current account deficit which has widened to record high of 6.7 percent of GDP for the third quarter ended December 2012. India is getting $50 billion foreign investment every year and during the year 2012 India has received $22.8 billion through FDI alone. India receives maximum FDI from Mauritius, followed by Japan, Singapore, the Netherlands and the UK.

India VIX, a gauge for markets short term expectation of volatility gained 5.59% at 16.22 from its previous close of 15.36 on Thursday. (Provisional)

The CNX Nifty gained 58.65 points or 1.01% to settle at 5,841.75. The index touched high and low of 5,844.85 and 5,789.80 respectively. 35 stocks advanced against 15 declining and one stock remains unchanged on the index. (Provisional)

The top gainers on the Nifty were Reliance Infrastructure up by 5.15%, Coal India up by 4.59%, L&T up by 4.24%, HDFC Bank up by 4.12% and IndusInd Bank was up by 3.64%. On the other hand, UltraTech Cement down by 3.01%, Infosys down by 2.21%, HCL Tech down by 2.15%, ONGC down by 2.00% and TCS down by 1.91% were the top losers. (Provisional)

Most of the European markets were trading in green with, Germany’s DAX up by 0.65%, the United Kingdom’s FTSE 100 up by 0.73% and France’s CAC 40 up by 0.59%.

Asian markets ended mostly higher on Monday, with Japan’s Nikkei closing with firm gains after a meeting of global finance leaders lent support to Japan’s aggressive monetary policy, which has driven the value of the yen down by more than 20% against the dollar since October. Shanghai Composite closed lower snapping earlier gains amid concerns about China’s economic growth trajectory. Hang Seng went home with green mark after swinging between modest gains and losses, with insurance providers coming under pressure, following the deadly earthquake that struck the Sichuan province.