Benchmarks make gap-up opening on firm global cues

Indian equity indices have made a gap-up opening and are trading jubilantly in the early deals with frontline indices re-capturing their crucial 6,000 (Nifty) and 19,900 (Sensex) levels on the back of firm global cues. Overnight, the US markets edged higher to another record close as Wall Street embraced the view of growing sense of optimism about a still-improving economy. Asian markets too were exhibiting firm trade at this point of time with Japanese Nikkei surging to a fresh five and a half year high as Japanese exporters rallied on the yen’s sharp slide. The yen hovered near a four and a half year low as against the dollar set on May 14, 2013.

Back home, sentiments remained higher after Finance Minister P Chidambaram said that he would set up a cell in his office to monitor and resolve the issues for speedy completion of the stalled infrastructure projects. Some support also came in after the global rating agency Standard & Poor’s said that India is projected to grow by 6 percent in the current fiscal, while growth is expected to be steady in most of the Asia Pacific economies. Rally in rate sensitives too supported the up-move as the Reserve Bank of India’s Governor Duvvuri Subbarao said that the central bank will take note of falling inflation when discussing potential interest rate cuts.

On the sectoral front, banking witnessed the maximum gain in trade followed by realty and capital goods while, software remained the lone loser on the BSE sectoral space. The broader indices too were going neck-to-neck with benchmarks while, the market breadth on the BSE was positive; there were 915 shares on the gaining side against 330 shares on the losing side while 65 shares remain unchanged.

The BSE Sensex opened in 19,798.18; about 76 points higher compared to its previous close of 19,722.29, and has touched a high and a low of 19,964.13 and 19,798.18 respectively. The index is currently trading at 19,942.16, up by 219.87 points or 1.11%. There were 27 stocks advancing against just 3 declines on the index.

The overall market breadth has made a firm start with 69.85% stocks advancing against 25.19% decline. The broader indices too were trading higher; the BSE Mid cap up by 0.95% and Small cap indices trading up by 0.77%.

The gaining sectoral indices on the BSE were, Bankex up by 1.72%, Realty up by 1.61%, Capital Goods up by 1.44%, Auto up by 1.28% and Oil and Gas up by 1.03%, while IT down by 0.01%, were the lone loser on the BSE.

The top gainers on the Sensex were HDFC up by 2.85%, SBI up by 2.17%, HDFC Bank up by 1.86%, Tata Motors up by 1.83% and Hero MotoCorp up by 1.78%.

On the flip side, Sun Pharma was down by 0.27%, TCS was down by 0.16% and Infosys was down by 0.07% were the top losers on the Sensex.

Meanwhile, in its probe into the issues raised by the Cobrapost sting operation, the Reserve Bank of India has revealed various discrepancies in banking operations, including non-compliance of KYC norms and fictitious PAN cards. After the Cobrapost expose that alleged money laundering by banks, RBI has completed the investigation into the working of banks. CobraPost altogether had named about 33 public and private sector banks in its various money laundering operations.

The RBI report has pointed string of violations on several counts by these banks, which include the usage of identity cards of unknown NRIs and dummy PAN, unauthorized gold sales and non-compliance of know your customer norms. Further, the central bank also revealed that banks’ staffs were also engaged in giving suggestions to customers on ways to bypass regulatory norms.

In its the annual policy review last week, the central bank had said that it will take systemic action to deal with the problem. RBI’s governor D Subbarao had said that firstly the action will be taken against individual institutions involve in practices which are not consistent with the banking regulation and prudential banking.

The CNX Nifty opened at 6,018.85; about 23 points higher as compared to its previous closing of 5,995.40, and has touched a high and a low of 6,068.00 and 6,018.85 respectively.

The index is currently trading at 6,063.70, up by 68.30 points or 1.14%. There were 44 stocks advancing against 6 declines on the index.

The top gainers of the Nifty were HDFC up by 2.76%, JP Associates up by 2.39%, R-Infra up by 2.29%, SBI up by 2.16% and IDFC up by 2.12%.

On the flip side, Ranbaxy down by 0.80%, Ambuja Cements down by 0.21%, Power Grid down by 0.13%, Sun Pharma down by 0.13% and Infosys down by 0.06%, were the major losers on the index.

Most of the Asian markets were trading in green; Hang Seng rose 115.97 points or 0.51% to 3,046.25, Jakarta Composite increased 10.28 points or 0.20% to 5,092.22, Nikkei 225 surged 303.98 points or 2.06% to 15,062.40, Straits Times added 4.86 points or 0.14% to 3,437.62 and Taiwan Weighted was up by 26.69 points or 0.32% to 8,278.51.

On the flip side, Shanghai Composite declined 2.44 points or 0.11% to 2,214.57 and KOSPI Composite was down by 1.41 points or 0.07% to 1,967.42.