Benchmarks show subdued trade; Nifty holds 5850

Key benchmarks pared most of the morning gains and turned choppy as most investors stayed on the sidelines watching the unfolding in the Asian markets along with the perilously placed Rupee which is by no means in the safer territory. Thus markets came off the opening highs in late morning session due to profit booking after the upmove in previous session. The market is likely to remain rangebound and take cues from rupee and quarterly earnings for the next move. The rupee strengthened marginally against the US dollar after the Reserve Bank of India's measures to curb volatility. The partially convertible rupee was at 60.05 per dollar, up 0.08 paise, against its previous close of 60.14. On the global front, Asian shares were trading firm but came off their day highs after data indicated that Chinese exports declined for the first time since January 2012, raising worries about that the world's second largest economy is slowing down. Back home, the traders were seen piling up positions in IT, Bankex and Teck, while selling was seen in Metal, FMCG and Oil & Gas sector. In scrip specific developments, IT stocks rose on recent weakness of rupee against the dollar. Shares of companies in the education space rallied for the second straight day. Sugar stocks gained after the government on Tuesday, July 9 2013, raised the import duty on sugar to 15% from 10% with immediate effect.

In scrip specific actions, Apollo Hospitals Enterprises (AHEL) soared after the hospital chain said that it had received its board's approval to invest Rs 2,250 crore targeting expansion over the next three years. The investment will be funded through existing funds, incremental debt and internal accruals, according to company's 2012-13 annual report. IOC surged after Malaysia's Petronas is in talks to sell 10 percent of its Canadian shale-gas assets to Indian Oil Corp. Reliance Industries dropped after Reliance Petroinvestments an RIL group entity, has approached Securities Appellate Tribunal (SAT) against Rs 11 crore penalty imposed by Sebi in an over six-year-old insider trading case. Deccan Chronicle Holdings (DCHL) tanked after the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) registered a case against T Venkattram Reddy, chairman of the Hyderabad-based media firm, for criminal conspiracy, cheating and forgery, based on a complaint filed by Canara Bank.

Meanwhile, the NSE Nifty and BSE Sensex were trying to hold the psychological 5,850 and 19,400 levels respectively. The market breadth on BSE was showing positive trend with advances to declines in ratio of 837:619. The BSE Sensex is currently trading at 19433.02, down by 6.46 points or 0.03% after trading in a range of 19505.93 and 19422.67. There were 13 stocks advancing against 17 declines on the index. The broader indices were trading in green; the BSE Mid cap index was up by 0.25% and Small cap index was up by 0.24%.

The top gaining sectoral indices on the BSE were, IT up by 0.46%, Bankex up by 0.42%, Teck up by 0.26%   Health Care up by 0.22%, and Power up by 0.07%, while Metal down by 0.68%, FMCG down by 0.22%, Oil & Gas down by 0.12%, Auto down by 0.09% and PSU down by 0.09% were the top losers on the losers on the BSE.

The top gainers on the Sensex were SBI up by 1.21%, Cipla up by 0.94%, Infosys up by 0.89%, Tata Power up by 0.88% and ICICI Bank up by 0.67%. On the flip side, Tata Steel was down by 1.70%, Tata Motors was down by 1.00%, Hindustan Unilever was down by 0.97%, Jindal Steel was down by 0.97% and Gail India was down by 0.93% were the top losers on the Sensex.

Meanwhile, In a bid to enhance the share of manufacturing in the country’s GDP, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has said that India needs to focus on the manufacturing over the next decade to achieve economy’s potential growth rate of 8-9 percent in the future. During the meeting of the high-level committee on manufacturing, Manmohan Singh said that the country’s economy is witnessing shift in its structure as agriculture sector, which continues to account for more than 50 percent of population, today represents less than 15 percent of GDP, therefore, there is a need to develop manufacturing sector, particularly labour-intensive manufacturing to pick up the economy’s growth.

Prime Minister further stated that there are certain manufacturing sectors which have done well over the last 20 years, like automobiles and pharmaceuticals among others, but, we did not leverage our strengths both in traditional industries and in emerging sectors and the country’s manufacturing production is at lower end of the value chain and hardly have any manufacturing capabilities in electronics and telecommunications sectors.

Manmohan Singh expressed the need to remove bottlenecks that hinder progress of manufacturing sector. Prime Minister will meet industry leaders on 29 July to discuss ways to enhance the Indian industry output. Though, the government has been taking all possible measures to boost the manufacturing growth and has already introduced a National Manufacturing Policy that seeks to take the share of manufacturing to 25% of GDP in the next 10 years from around 14% now. 

The CNX Nifty is currently trading at 5,860.25 up by 1.25 points or 0.02% after trading in a range of 5,879.35 and 5,854.75. There were 25 stocks advancing against 25 declines on the index.

The top gainers of the Nifty were Ultra Cements up by 2.27%, Kotak Bank up by 1.55%, JP Associates up by 1.41%, Lupin up by 1.36% and Asian Paint up by 1.17%. On the flip side, Tata Steel down by 2.16%, Jindal Steel down by 1.08%, BPCL down by 1.06%, Cairn down by 1.04% and Tata Motors down by 0.99% were the major losers on the index.

Most of the Asian equity indices were trading in green; Shanghai Composite rose 7.62 points or 0.39% to 1,973.07, Hang Seng increased 89.24 points or 0.43% to 20,772.25, Jakarta Composite added 56.20 points or 1.28% to 4,460.00, Straits Times was up by 7.57 points or 0.24% to 3,186.71, Taiwan Weighted was up by 13.12 points or 0.16% to 7,984.30 and KLSE Composite was up by 2.18 points or 0.12% to 1,768.67.

On the flip side, Nikkei 225 was down by 170.60 points or 1.18% to 14,302.30 and KOSPI Composite was down by 10.78 points or 0.59% to 1,819.25.