Sensex, Nifty trade in fine-fettle following global peers as US recession fears fade

Indian equity benchmarks made gap-up opening on Friday tracking the broadly positive cues from Wall Street overnight as well as firm trade in Asian counterparts, after stronger than expected US retail sales and weekly jobless claims data helped ease concerns about a recession in the world's largest economy. Sensex and Nifty are trading in fine-fettle with gains of over half a percent each in early deals led by buying in IT and Realty counters. Some optimism came as Prime Minister Narendra Modi said the government is taking steps to transform India into a global manufacturing hub, and he called for improving the quality of products and services to attain international standards. 

Traders overlooked data from the Commerce Ministry showed India's trade deficit widened to $23.50 billion on an annual basis in July from $19 billion in the same month last year. In June, the trade deficit was $20.98 billion. Merchandise exports in July this year dipped by 1.4 per cent year-on-year to $33.98 billion while imports rose by 7.5 per cent to $57.48 billion. Merchandise exports and imports stood at $34.39 billion and $53.49 billion in June 2023, respectively. 

On the sectoral front, edible oil industry stocks are in focus as industry body SEA said India's edible oil imports declined marginally by 1.6 per cent to 11.935 million tonnes in the first nine months of 2023-24 marketing year ending October. In stock specific development, Ola Electric Mobility soared after launching a new series of motorcycles.

The BSE Sensex is currently trading at 79610.69, up by 504.81 points or 0.64% after trading in a range of 79568.09 and 79988.22. There were 25 stocks advancing against 5 stocks declining on the index.

The broader indices were trading in green; the BSE Mid cap index rose 0.82%, while Small cap index was up by 1.01%.

The top gaining sectoral indices on the BSE were IT up by 1.81%, Realty up by 1.78%, TECK up by 1.33%, Auto up by 1.18% and Oil & Gas up by 1.17%, while there was no losing induces on the BSE.

The top gainers on the Sensex were Mahindra & Mahindra up by 2.71%, TCS up by 2.59%, Tata Motors up by 2.20%, Tech Mahindra up by 1.94% and HCL Technologies up by 1.13%. On the flip side, Titan Company down by 0.15%, Ultratech Cement down by 0.14%, Bharti Airtel down by 0.12%, Sun Pharma down by 0.05% and Bajaj Finance down by 0.04% were the top losers.

Meanwhile, expressing optimism over India’s startup ecosystem, Amitabh Kant, former CEO of NITI Aayog and G20 Sherpa has highlighted the country’s rapid transformation into the third-best startup ecosystem globally, with 135 unicorns and over 1.4 lakh startups. Kant said ‘We started with 356 startups. Today we have 1,40,000 startups. We have about 135 unicorns. We’ve created the third-best ecosystem in the world. The startup ecosystem would get a huge impetus from the abolition of the angel tax, which is now being done.’

Kant praised the removal of the Angel Tax in this year’s budget, which will benefit startups. He also stressed the importance of creating global champions through initiatives like the Production Linked Incentive (PLI) scheme. In this year’s budget, the Angel Tax has been removed, which will greatly help the startups in India. Calling for a more substantial local investment to sustain the growth of the sector, he said ‘We would now require a lot of Indians, Indian pension funds, insurance companies, all to invest in our own startup. 75 per cent of the resources in our startup movement come from abroad. More and more Indians must invest in our own startup movement. That is the way forward. But we’ve done remarkably well as a startup nation.’

He also highlighted India’s ambition to become a global economic powerhouse by 2047, stressing the importance of domestic investment and the government’s push to create global champions through initiatives like the Production Linked Incentive (PLI) scheme. On the global stage, Kant believes that India is viewed as a key driver of growth in a challenging global economic environment. Underscoring India’s robust growth rate, terming it as ‘remarkable’, he said ‘India is the fastest-growing nation. We have grown at about 8.4 per cent which is remarkable and we will accelerate the pace of our growth as we go further. We want to become the third-largest economy in the world.’

The CNX Nifty is currently trading at 24305.45, up by 161.70 points or 0.67% after trading in a range of 24285.95 and 24403.55. There were 41 stocks advancing against 9 stocks declining on the index.

The top gainers on Nifty were LTIMindtree up by 3.03%, Apollo Hospital up by 2.80%, Mahindra & Mahindra up by 2.59%, TCS up by 2.55% and Tata Motors up by 2.13%. On the flip side, HDFC Life Insurance down by 1.51%, SBI Life Insurance down by 0.75%, Ultratech Cement down by 0.26%, Titan Company down by 0.23% and Bharti Airtel down by 0.12% were the top losers.

All Asian markets are trading higher; Nikkei 225 surged 1142.32 points or 3.02% to 37,868.96, Taiwan Weighted added 441.31 points or 1.98% to 22,336.48, Hang Seng advanced 288.47 points or 1.66% to 17,397.61, KOSPI increased 48.73 points or 1.81% to 2,693.23, Jakarta Composite gained 36.91 points or 0.5% to 7,446.41, Straits Times rose 36.17 points or 1.08% to 3,351.90 and Shanghai Composite strengthened 2.65 points or 0.09% to 2,880.01.