Benchmarks off day’s high; Nifty at striking distance of 6050 mark

Benchmarks are currently trading off intraday high, scaled in early afternoon deals; though trade at D-street remains fairly positive at the start of F&O expiry week despite the cautious start of European markets. Benchmark indexes, Sensex and Nifty, gaining around half a percentage points, are trading at the striking distance of crucial 20,250 and 6,050 levels respectively. Meanwhile, broader indices too are sustaining gains.

On the global front, European shares have got off to a mixed start despite the bullish results from the likes of Philips and Julius Baer. Meanwhile, Asian pacific shares are trading mostly higher tracing the strong gains of Tokyo’s index post parliamentary election win for Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's ruling party.

Closer home, the sentiment turned bullish after foreign institutional investors remained a net buyer in the cash segment on Friday after being net sellers in each of the previous four sessions for a total of Rs 604 crore. On the BSE sectoral front, stocks from Bankex, Information Technology and Auto counters were the prominent gainers, while those from Oil & Gas, Power and Public Sector Undertaking counters were the top laggards. The overall market breadth on BSE is in the favour of declines which thumped advances in the ratio of 1004:979; while 118 shares remained unchanged.

The BSE Sensex is currently trading at 20248.67, up by 98.82 points or 0.49% after trading in a range of 20264.90 and 20065.69. The broader indices continued to trade firm in green; the BSE Mid cap and Small cap indices were up by 0.59% and 0.14% respectively.

Out the Sensex, 20 stocks were advancing, while 10 were declining. The top gaining sectoral indices on the BSE were, Bankex up by 1.07%, IT up by 1.04%, Auto up by 0.96%, TECk up by 0.93% and Metal up by 0.25%, while Oil & Gas down by 1.45%, Power down by 0.34%, PSU down by 0.30% and Consumer Durables down by 0.24% were the top losers on the BSE.

The top gainers on the Sensex were HDFC up by 2.87%, Sun Pharma up by 2.43%, Mahindra & Mahindra up by 2.11%, Hindalco up by 1.88% and Infosys up by 1.52%. On the flip side, BHEL was down by 4.29%, ONGC down by 2.02%, RIL down by 1.64%, Dr Reddy’s Lab down by 1.46% and Gail India was down by 1.43%  were the top losers on the Sensex.

Meanwhile, on the grounds of potential threat to country’s security, the Home Ministry has strongly opposed any move to increase the FDI cap in the broadcasting and print media. Apprehending 'undue' influence by big global players, the Home Ministry strongly favours control of media houses by Indians, and is of the view that opening up of current affairs TV channels, newspapers and periodicals dealing with news and current affairs may lead to meddling in India’s domestic affairs and politics.

The Ministry also fears that increase of FDI in broadcasting and print media may also allow foreign players to launch propaganda campaign during any national crisis as well as when interests of any particular country is harmed through any government decision.

Further, it feels that big foreign media players with vested interests may try to fuel fire during internal or external disturbances and also can encourage political instability in the country through their publications or broadcasting outlets.

It was basically after Home Ministry's strong objections that a high-level meeting chaired by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, on July 16, did not clear the Commerce Ministry's proposal for increasing FDI in broadcasting and print media to 49% through automatic route. Currently, the sectoral cap for FDI in FM radio, uplinking news and current affairs TV channels and in print media is 26 per cent and the Commerce Ministry has proposed to raise it to 49 per cent through the automatic route.

The CNX Nifty is currently trading at 6,049.45 up by 20.45 points or 0.34% after trading in a range of 6,064.15 and 6,004.25.

In the 50 share index, 31 stocks were advancing and 19 were declinning, The top gainers of the Nifty were HDFC up by 3.09%, Bank of Baroda up by 2.98%, Sun Pharma up by 2.61 % IndusInd Bank up by 2.15%, and M&M up by 1.91%. On the flip side, Ambuja Cements down by 5.19%, BHEL down by 4.35%, ACC down by 2.78%, Ranbaxy down by 2.76% and ONGC down by 2.37% were the major losers on the index.

The most of Asian equity indices were trading in green; KLSE Composite gained 0.24%, Straits Times increased 0.66%, Seoul Composite added 0.48%, Taiwan Weighted up by 0.54%, Nikkei 225 was up by 0.47% and Jakarta Composite contracted 0.57%. On the flip side, Shanghai Composite declined by 0.55%, Hang Seng dropped 0.03% were the losers.

European markets got off to a cautious start; with CAC 40 adding 0.06%, DAX and FTSE 100 are edging lower by 0.10% and 0.22% respectively.