Benchmarks pare gains; IT, Teck lead

Indian equities have pared early morning gains and are now trading marginally in green in the late morning session despite posting encouraging fourth quarter earnings by Maruti Suzuki and ICICI Bank. On the global front, Asian markets were trading mostly in the red ahead of slew of economic data and central bank policy meetings in the euro zone and United States. Back home, the traders were seen piling up positions in IT, Teck and Power, while selling was seen in Metal, Bankex and Capital Goods sector. 

In scrip specific actions, Bharti Airtel surged on expectations of better-than-expected earnings for January-March, taking cues from Idea Cellular which beat March quarter earnings estimates. Hexaware Technologies  surged after reporting a 20% quarter-on-quarter (q-o-q) jump in its consolidated net profit at Rs 79.28 crore for the quarter ended March due to lower operating expenses and foreign exchange gain of Rs 2.25 crore. Maruti Suzuki gained on the back of positive earnings. India's largest carmaker defied the worst slowdown in 12 years for India's car market with a stunning 80 per cent year on year increase in net profit at Rs. 1,150 crore for the fourth quarter, benefiting from robust sales of its Ertiga multi-purpose vehicle and a sharp decline in the yen. FMCG major Hindustan Unilever traded lower ahead of its Q4 earnings announcement today. The company is expected to report a 9.8 per cent year on year growth in net profit to Rs.730 crore. However, EBITDA margins will likely be flat at 17.7 per cent on subdued consumer demand.

Meanwhile, the NSE Nifty and BSE Sensex were trading just above their psychological 5,850 and 19,300 levels respectively. The market breadth on BSE was showing positive trend with advances to declines in ratio of 927: 682.

The BSE Sensex is currently trading at 19327.96, up by 41.24 points or 0.21% after trading in a range of 19387.90 and 19294.60. There were 21 stocks advancing against 9 declines on the index.

The broader indices were trading in green; the BSE Mid cap index was up by 0.38% and Small cap index was up by 0.27%.

The top gaining sectoral indices on the BSE were, IT up by 1.14%, Teck up by 0.96%, Power up by 0.87%, Oil & Gas up by 0.81% and Realty up by 0.58% while, Metal down by 0.29%, Bankex down by 0.09% and Capital Goods down by 0.05% were the losers on the BSE.

The top gainers on the Sensex were Hero MotoCorp up by 3.76%, Wipro up by 1.73%, ONGC up by 1.71%, Sterlite Inds up by 1.67% and HDFC Bank up by 0.96%.

On the flip side, Jindal Steel was down by 3.15%, Hindalco Industries was down by 0.89%, Hindustan Unilever was down by 0.81%, SBI was down by 0.70% and HDFC was down by 0.61% were the top losers on the Sensex.

Meanwhile, Concerned over the widening trade deficit, the government has set up a six-member inter-ministerial committee under the chairmanship of Finance Secretary R S Gujral which will suggest measures to boost the Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSME) exports. The sector contributes around 8% of the country's GDP, 45% of the manufactured output, 40% of the total country’s exports and provides employment to about 60 million persons through 26 million enterprises.

The committee will suggest short and long term measures to enhance exports from MSME sector and will submit its recommendations by mid-May. Issues related to MSMEs need to be looked with greater depth as exports are not doing well due to which the country's trade deficit touched an all-time high of $190.1 billion in FY13. Moreover, the sector would also help in boosting the growth of manufacturing sector.  

The widening trade gap is adding woes on the Current Account Deficit (CAD) front, which has emerged as a tough policy challenge for the government. CAD crossed 6.7 percent of the GDP in the third quarter of last fiscal. However, in order to increase shipments from the country, the government is taking every step including recent announcement of incentives and revamping of special economic zone (SEZ) policy.  

The CNX Nifty is currently trading at 5,883.25 up by 11.80 points or 0.20% after trading in a range of 5,899.15 and 5,871.15. There were 31 stocks advancing against 19 declines on the index.

The top gainers of the Nifty were Hero MotoCorp up by 3.83%, Cairn up by 2.40%, HCL Tech up by 2.01%, ONGC up by 1.93% and Grasim up by 1.81%.

On the flip side, Jindal Steel & Power down by 3.32%, Ambuja Cements down by 1.63%, Kotak Bank down by 1.51%, Axis Bank down by 1.09%, and IDFC down by 0.96% were the major losers on the index.

Most of the Asian equity indices were trading in red; Jakarta Composite increased 15.61 points or 0.31% to 4,994.11, Straits Times added 6.75 points or 0.19% to 3,356.15. On the flip side, Hang Seng dropped 0.37 points or 0.01% to 22,547.34, KLSE Composite slipped 0.26 points or 0.02% to 1,711.03, KOSPI Composite was down by 3.23 points or 0.17% to 1,941.33 and Taiwan Weighted was down by 3.16 points or 0.04% to 8,018.90.Markets in mainland China and Japan were closed for holidays.