Benchmarks pare gains but continue trade in green

Indian equities pared gains but continued to trade in green in the late morning session. Sentiment got some support after Finance Minister P Chidambaram said yesterday that revival and encouragement of growth will continue to be the focus of the government.

On the global front, Asian markets were rallying at this point of time with Japanese Nikkei surging sharply around two and a half percent with the yen declining against the US dollar and the overnight positive close on Wall Street lifting sentiment to a significant extent and triggering heavy buying almost across the board. Back home, traders were buying, Consumer Durables, Capital Goods and Auto, while selling were seen in FMCG and TECk on the BSE. Shares in metal companies continued to gain for a second day after a positive reading on China's manufacturing sector on Thursday. Jindal Steel and Power surged 4.6 per cent.

Meanwhile, the benchmarks NSE Nifty and BSE Sensex were trading near the psychological 5,400 and 18,300 levels respectively. The market breadth on BSE was showing positive trend with advances to declines in the ratio of 1076:512.The BSE Sensex is currently trading at 18368.26, up by 55.32 points or 0.30% after trading in a range of 18402.29 and 18210.75. There were 14 stocks advancing against 16 declines on the index. The broader indices were trading in green; the BSE Mid cap index was up by 1.08% and Small cap index up by 1.00%.

 The top gaining sectoral indices on the BSE were, Consumer Durables up by 3.12%, Capital Goods up by 1.43%, Auto up by 1.34%, Realty up by 1.25% and Bankex up by 1.21% and while FMCG down by 0.25%  and TECk down by 0.08% were the top losers on the sectoral index.

The top gainers on the Sensex were Jindal Steel up by 3.74%, BHEL up by 3.21%, Tata Motors up by 3.97%, Mahindra & Mahindra up by 1.87% and ICICI Bank up by 1.72%. On the flip side, Bharti Airtel was down by 1.96%, Hindalco Inds was down by 1.69%, Hero MotoCorp was down by 1.66%, Dr Reddys Lab was down by 1.44% and NTPC was down by 1.41% were the top losers on the Sensex.

Meanwhile, admitting that Indian economy’s growth is under pressure, Finance Minister P Chidambaram said that economic growth is likely to remain flat in the first quarter of the current fiscal on account of global slowdown as well as some domestic factors. However, Chidambaram added that the economy’s growth is likely to pick up in the remaining three quarters of FY14 on back of various initiatives taken by the government like increase in sown area by about 9.1 percent, acceleration in plan expenditure and implementation of various infrastructure projects cleared by the cabinet committee on investment (CCI) in last few months . The country's economic growth has slowed down to decade low of 5 percent in the last fiscal year.

In order to improve the country’s deteriorating macro-indicators, Chidambaram said that during the last 12 months the government has taken a number of measures to contain inflation and revive investment and growth. Referring to the rupee depreciation, Finance Minister said that the domestic currency is undervalued and has overshot appropriate levels, but there is no need to take panic and stability will return to currency markets as government continues to promote investment and growth. Rupee value fell by 5.5 percent in the last five days and depreciated to a record low of over 65 per dollar.

Rupee is depreciating on account of high current account deficit (CAD), which widened to a record high of 4.8 percent in the FY13. High gold imports and crude oil prices are the main factors behind the broadening CAD of the country.  

The CNX Nifty is currently trading at 5,439.15 up by 30.70 points or 0.57% after trading in a range of 5,449.25 and 5,377.80. There were 30 stocks advancing against 20 declines on the index.

The top gainers of the Nifty were Jindal Steel up by 4.31%, BHEL up by 4.14%, IDFC up by 3.05%,Tata Motors up by 2.91% and  Bank Baroda up by 2.26%. On the flip side, UltraTech Cement down by 3.01%, Bharti Airtel down by 1.84%, Hindalco down by 1.78%, Sesa Goa down by 1.48% and NTPC  down by 1.41% were the major losers on the index.

The Asian equity indices were trading in green; Shanghai Composite rose 6.26 points or 0.30% to 2,073.38, Hang Seng strengthened 115.67 points or 0.53% to 22,011.07, Jakarta Composite surged 56.89 points or 1.36% to 4,228.31, KLSE Composite increased 7.31 points or 0.42% to 1,727.68, Nikkei 225 soared 333.27 points or 2.49% to 13,698.44, Straits Times jumped 10.05 points or 0.33% to 3,099.45, Seoul Composite added 21.91 points or 1.18% to 1,871.03 and Taiwan Weighted was up by 68.14 points or 0.87% to 7,882.52.