Indian markets maintain upmove as rupee recovers

Indian markets have witnessed a rangebound session with a positive bias in late morning session even as other Asian markets reel under pressure after China's factory activity shrank for a second straight month in June and reached its lowest in nine months. Sentiments remained bullish after the government last week approved near doubling of natural gas prices to $8.4 from April 1 next year. Besides, further recovery in rupee’s value against the dollar also supported the upside. The market sentiment was boosted by provisional data showing that foreign fund turned into net buyers of Indian stocks on Friday, 28 June 2013. Foreign institutional investors (FIIs) bought shares worth a net Rs 1124.31 crore on Friday, 28 June 2013, as per provisional data from the stock exchanges.

On the global front, all the Asian equity indices were trading in the red at this point of time, as sentiments got dampened after Chinese factory activity shrank for a second consecutive month in June and reached its lowest in nine months as new orders fell despite price cuts by producers. The HSBC/Markit Purchasing Managers’ Index (PMI) for June retreated to 48.20, the lowest level since September 2012 and down from May’s final reading of 49.20

Back home, the traders were seen piling up positions in Power, Realty and PSU while selling was seen in IT and Teck sector. In scrip specific developments, Stocks of oil companies such as HPCL and BPCL were in good demand following a hike in petrol prices. Infrastructure sector stocks rose after Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh on Friday, 28 June 2013, held a meeting with the ministries of power, coal, railways, roads, shipping and civil aviation to set up targets for the current fiscal year. IT stocks such as TCS, HCL Technologies and Infosys came under pressure on Monday, weighed down by continued concerns of immigration bill as well as job cuts.

In scrip specific actions, Jindal Steel and Power surged  after the company plans to commission a 2 million tonnes per annum (MTPA) capacity plant in Oman in October, which the company claims would be the largest steel plant in the Gulf region. GMR Infrastructure surged after the infrastructure major GMR Group is among 11 bidders initially shortlisted for building a 200 MW gas-fired power plant in Malta in the African continent. ONGC rose after the state-owned company has initiated talks with Reliance Industries seeking a deal to share infrastructure at the Krishna-Godavari (KG) basin.

Meanwhile, the NSE Nifty and BSE Sensex were trading just above their psychological 5,850 and 19,400 levels respectively. The market breadth on BSE was showing positive trend with advances to declines in ratio of 1074:529. The BSE Sensex is currently trading at 19455.18, up by 59.37 points or 0.31% after trading in a range of 19496.09 and 19347.57. There were 22 stocks advancing against 8 declines on the index. The broader indices were trading on green; the BSE Mid cap index was up by 1.09% and Small cap index was up by 0.99%.

The top gaining sectoral indices on the BSE were, Power up by 1.76%, Realty up by 1.67%, PSU up by1.11%, Health Care up by 1.00%, and Oil & Gas up by 0.93%, while IT down by 1.16% and Teck down by 0.48% on the BSE.

The top gainers on the Sensex were BHEL up by 2.95%, L&T up by 2.30%, Tata Power up by 2.21%,  Jindal Steel up by 2.09% and NTPC up by 1.70%. On the flip side, TCS was down by 1.53%,  Infosys was down by 1.37%, Bajaj Auto was down by 0.86%, ICICI Bank was down by 0.72% and Maruti Suzuki was down by 0.62% were the top losers on the Sensex.

Meanwhile, In a move to boost the growth of infrastructure sector, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has set an investment target of Rs 1.15 lakh crore for PPP (public private partnership) infrastructure projects in rail, port and power in the next six months. The decisions were taken at a meeting, which was held by Prime Minister to finalise infrastructure projects for 2013-14 and was attended by Finance Minister, Planning Commission Deputy Chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia and ministers of power, coal, railways, roads, shipping and civil aviation.

The Prime Minister stressed the need for ramping up investment in infrastructure to revive investors’ sentiment and said that a steering group is being formed to monitor the award and implementation of projects on priority basis to meet the set target.

The main proposals of the investment target include Mumbai elevated rail corridor (Rs 30,000 crore), power and transmission projects (Rs 40,000 crore) and two international airports in Bhubneshwar and Imphal (Rs 20,000 crore). The meeting also decided that the proposal for creating a rail tariff authority will be brought before the cabinet soon.

The government has identified the development of infrastructure as a most crucial to boost the economy’s growth. Recently, it has set up the Cabinet Committee on Investments (CCI) to clear the bottlenecks holding back mega infrastructure projects. For the 12th Five Year Plan (2012-17), the government has set the $1-trillion investment target for the infrastructure sector and has entered into the 'Public Private Partnership (PPP)' programme in order to bring in adequate resources for setting up of a sound and efficient infrastructural base

The CNX Nifty is currently trading at 5,859.10 up by 16.90 points or 0.29% after trading in a range of 5,870.35 and 5,822.20. There were 39 stocks advancing against 11 declines on the index.

The top gainers of the Nifty were Ranbaxy up by 3.48%, BHEL up by 3.01%, IndusInd Bank up by 2.65%, JP Associates up by 2.15% and Jindal Steel up by 2.05%. On the flip side, Infosys down by 1.58%, TCS down by 1.48%, Bajaj-Auto down by 1.19%, ICICI Bank down by 0.81% and Maruti down by 0.76% were the major losers on the index.

Most of the Asian equity indices were trading in red; Shanghai Composite declined 10.23 points or 0.52% to 1,970.17, Jakarta Composite dropped 33.57 points or 0.70% to 4,785.33, KLSE Composite slipped 0.56 points or 0.03% to 1,772.98, Straits Times dipped 8.59 points or 0.27% to 3,141.97, KOSPI Composite contracted by 1.87 points or 0.05% to 1,862.33 and Taiwan Weighted was down by 8.52 points or 0.17% to 8,048.56.

On the flip side, Nikkei 225 increased 11.79 points or 0.09% to 13,665.53