Sensex, Nifty continue to trade in green

The Indian benchmarks have continued to trade firm in the late morning session with buying interest visible in oil & gas shares. Sentiments got some support from Reliance Industries, which rose reacting to a huge gas discovery in KG basin. Investors are waiting for progress of monsoon and GDP data to be released this week. On the global front, most of the Asian equity indices were trading in green at this point of time gaining strength from Chinese President Xi Jinping’s statement that the country won’t sacrifice environment for short term growth. Back home, the traders were seen piling up positions in Oil & Gas, Health Care and Consumer Durables while selling was seen in Auto and Capital Goods sector. 

In scrip specific actions, Wockhardt traded higher ahead of its quarterly results. SAIL gained as the state-run company will add over 6 million tonne per annum steel-making capacity in the current fiscal to take the total to 19.5 mtpa as part of its ongoing Rs 61,870 crore capex programme. Reliance Communications rose after the telecom major raised basic rates for both GSM and CDMA pre-paid mobile-to-mobile calls by 33% to 2 paise per second from 1.5 paise per second. Reliance Industries soared, after the oil & gas major and its partners BP and NIKO announced a 'significant' gas and condensate discovery in the KG D6 block off the eastern coast of India. Uttam Value Steels jumped after the company reported its first-ever profit in many quarters, at Rs 17.74 crore for the January-March period 2013, largely due to rise in sales. Britannia Industries surged after the confectionery major posted 65.66 per cent rise in net profit at Rs 87.85 crore for the fourth quarter ended March 31. Oil India zoomed after the state-owned firm reported 71.88 per cent jump in net profit to Rs 764.55 crore for the quarter ended March 31, 2013. Jet Airways tanked after the airliner said that its net loss widened to Rs 4.96 billion for its fiscal fourth-quarter ended March, from Rs 2.98 billion reported a year earlier.

Meanwhile, the NSE Nifty and BSE Sensex were trading just above their psychological 6,000 and 19,800 levels respectively. The market breadth on BSE was showing positive trend with advances to declines in ratio of 1124: 546.

The BSE Sensex is currently trading at 19872.03, up by 167.70 points or 0.85% after trading in a range of 19872.95 and 19678.31. There were 17 stocks advancing against 13 declines on the index.

The broader indices were trading in green; the BSE Mid cap index was up by 0.82% and Small cap index was up by 0.93%. The top gaining sectoral indices on the BSE were, Oil & Gas up by 1.97%, Health Care up by 1.24%, Consumer Durables up by 1.08%, Teck up by 1.00% and Realty up by 0.86% while, Auto down by 0.45% and Capital Goods down by 0.08 %were the only losers on the BSE.

The top gainers on the Sensex were RIL up by 3.82%, Bharti Airtel up by 3.27%, Sun Pharma up by 2.92%, Jindal Steel up by 1.68% and Dr Reddys Lab up by 1.59%. On the flip side, Bajaj Auto was down by 1.58%,Mahindra & Mahindra was down by 1.56%, Maruti Suzuki was down by 0.84%, Cipla was down by 0.72%, and Wipro was down by 0.46% were the top losers on the Sensex.

Meanwhile, Expressing confidence that sagging economic growth will revive soon, Finance Minister P Chidambaram said, in the current fiscal, domestic economy will grow by at least one percent more than the last fiscal growth of around 5 percent. Whereas, the FY15 growth will be a percentage point higher than the current fiscal and will soon touch the potential growth rate of 8 percent, he added.

For achieving the exponential growth, as against normal growth Chidambaram stressed that financial sector regulators, institutions and supervisors will have to gear up for the challenges posed for accelerating growth. By adding further, he said that institutions such as income tax and customs departments will have to enlarge their scale of operations to manage the size.

Referring to the banking sector, Chidambaram said, banks should differentiate the business cycle-affected honest defaulters from others and asked not to abandon the latter group. He also articulated the need for multi-tasking skills mainly by bank’s senior level officers to provide better service to customers.         

The CNX Nifty is currently trading at 6,030.75 up by 47.20 points or 0.79% after trading in a range of 6,032.90 and 5,975.55. There were 32 stocks advancing against 18 declines on the index.

The top gainers of the Nifty were Reliance Industries up by 4.08%, Bharti Airtel up by 3.52%, Sun Pharmaceuticals up by 3.10%, IndusInd Bank up by 2.06% and Jindal Steel up by 1.73%. On the flip side, Lupin down by 2.00%, M&M down by 1.68%, Bajaj-Auto down by 1.68%, Maruti Suzuki down by 1.27% and Bank of Baroda down by 1.01% were the major losers on the index.

Most of the Asian equity indices were trading in green; Shanghai Composite rose 0.23 points or 0.01% to 2,288.76, Hang Seng increased 57.58 points or 0.25% to 22,676.20, Straits Times added 1.82 points or 0.05% to 3,395.88, KOSPI Composite surged 8.53 points or 0.43% to 1,981.73 and Taiwan Weighted was up by 58.40 points or 0.71% to 8,267.92.

On the flip side, Jakarta Composite declined 65.96 points or 1.28% to 5,089.14, KLSE Composite slipped 3.50 points or 0.20% to 1,769.56 and Nikkei 225 was down by 365.51 points or 2.50% to 14,246.94.