Benchmarks continue to trade marginally in green in morning deals

Indian equity benchmarks continued to trade marginally in green in morning deals, led by gains in PSU, Oil & Gas and Energy stocks. Traders took some support with Chief Economic Advisor V Anantha Nageswaran’s statement that the country’s economic growth can become faster if the much-awaited private capital formation kicks into higher gear. He said that post-COVID financial balance sheets of corporates have been positive. Some support also came as India's foreign exchange reserves increased to $604 billion as on December 1, surpassing the $600 billion mark after a gap of about four months. However, gains remain capped as the Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI’s) forward looking surveys showed that households expect some rise in price and inflationary pressures across major product groups for the year ahead. Consumers retained negative sentiments on both the current and future price conditions. Expectations regarding overall prices and inflation over the next three months were more aligned with those of food products and services. On the global front, Asian markets are trading mixed ahead of a week packed with a quintet of central bank meetings and data on U.S. inflation that could make or break market hopes for an early and rapid fire round of rate cuts next year.

The BSE Sensex is currently trading at 69965.92, up by 140.32 points or 0.20% after trading in a range of 69797.15 and 70048.90. There were 22 stocks advancing against 8 stocks declining on the index.

The broader indices ended in green; the BSE Mid cap index rose 0.57%, while Small cap index was up by 0.69%.

The top gaining sectoral indices on the BSE were PSU up by 1.12%, Oil & Gas up by 0.89%, Energy up by 0.83%, Realty up by 0.62% and Industrials up by 0.54%, while Healthcare down by 0.50% and Power down by 0.02% were the top losing indices on BSE.

The top gainers on the Sensex were Indusind Bank up by 1.41%, Ultratech Cement up by 1.39%, Kotak Mahindra Bank up by 1.29%, Tata Motors up by 1.27% and Power Grid Corporation up by 0.68%. On the flip side, Asian Paints down by 0.64%, Axis Bank down by 0.41%, JSW Steel down by 0.41%, Wipro down by 0.38% and Hindustan Unilever down by 0.30% were the top losers.

Meanwhile, Minister of State for Road Transport and Highways V K Singh said that India has made immense progress in the steel, electronics and IT sectors and attained significant spots in these areas globally. He stated in the last 9 years, India became the second largest steel producing nation globally and had a steel making capacity of 161 million tonnes (MT) in FY 2023. He said At 161 MT, the installed steel capacity was 58 per cent higher from 102 MT in FY 2013-14. The country made a progress on the demand side as well. From per capita steel consumption of around 59 kilogrammes earlier, today the per capita steel consumption is at around 86 kgs, up 46 per cent. 

Moreover, he said exports in steel rose to 6.72 MT from 5.98 MT in the comparative year. While the imports rose to 6.02 MT from 5.45 MT in FY 2013-14. The government also took several measures to boost the domestic production of steel by introducing Rs 6,322 crore production linked incentive (PLI) scheme and National Steel Policy (NSP) which envisages to scale up the production capacity to 300 MT by 2030 and per capita steel consumption to around 160 kgs.

Talking about electronics sector, he said the production of mobile phones has risen from about 6 crore in 2014-15 to about 32 crore in 2021-223. The export of mobile handsets from India increased from over Rs 1,566 crore in FY 2014-15 to Rs 35,696 crore in FY 2021-22. The value of export of mobile phones in FY 2022-23 (till Jan 2023) stood at Rs 68,605 crore. From just 2 mobile phone factories in 2014, India now has become the second largest mobile phone producer in the world.

India has almost 120 crore mobile connections, among which a major chunk are smartphones. The demand started growing throughout the first decade of the new millennium, and it exploded in 2016 when the per GB data price became as low as Rs 10, making India a global leader in cheap internet accessibility and penetration. In the area of IT, he said more than 21,800 government services are being provided from 300-plus central and state departments to over 5 crore users through UMANG, improving ease-of-living for citizens with just a few clicks. More than 136 crore Aadhaar have been issued.

The CNX Nifty is currently trading at 21011.20, up by 41.80 points or 0.20% after trading in a range of 20923.70 and 21019.80. There were 37 stocks advancing against 13 stocks declining on the index.

The top gainers on Nifty were UPL up by 2.08%, ONGC up by 1.99%, Coal India up by 1.81%, Tata Motors up by 1.43% and Indusind Bank up by 1.36%. On the flip side, Dr. Reddy's Lab down by 5.12%, Cipla down by 0.88%, Wipro down by 0.56%, Asian Paints down by 0.51% and Apollo Hospital down by 0.49% were the top losers.

Asian markets are trading mixed; Hang Seng declined 333.53 points or 2.08% to 16,000.84, Straits Times fell 23.58 points or 0.76% to 3,087.15, KOSPI dropped 0.15 points or 0.01% to 2,517.70 and Shanghai Composite weakened 16.71 points or 0.57% to 2,952.85.

On the flip side, Nikkei 225 surged 467.31 points or 1.45% to 32,775.17, Taiwan Weighted added 15.43 points or 0.09% to 17,399.42 and Jakarta Composite plunged 47.58 points or 0.66% to 7,112.02.