Benchmarks escalate to day’s high; Sensex nears 18,300 mark

Gaining strength brick by brick, Indian equity markets are now trading near day’s high point on sustained buying by large funds and investors after India’s Apex Bank, in its latest attempt to curb Rupee’s volatility, opened a forex swap window to help the three state-owned oil marketing companies (OMCs), to meet their entire daily dollar requirements, which has led to Rupee’s substantial recovery. Meanwhile, positive global set-up also is adding to the pullback rally of bourses. Escalating to day’s high, Sensex and Nifty, both scooping gains of over percent and half, are comfortably cruising past the crucial 18,250 and 5,350 psychological levels respectively. Meanwhile, broader indices, underperforming global peers, are trading with gains of sub 1%.

On the global front, Asian shares appeared set for positive close on abating fears that US-led forces would soon launch a military strike on Syria, and oil prices retreating from a six-month peak. Meanwhile, European shares too opened higher despite ongoing tension in Middle East and also investors watch U.S. data and speeches from Federal Reserve presidents.

Closer home, only Realty Stocks were trading murky in the jaunty session of trade. On the other hand, Consumer Durable, Capital Goods and Metal counters were the major pockets of strength. Realty stocks were trading jittery amidst Land Acquisition and Rehabilitation Bill being tabled in the Lok Sabha on Thursday amid ruckus by the Opposition members. The most important feature of the bill is that the consent of 80% of land owners concerned is needed for acquiring land for private projects and of 70% landowners for public-private projects. The overall market breadth on BSE is in the favour of declines which have thumped advances in the ratio of advances which thumped declines in the ratio of 1251:559; while 39 shares remained unchanged.

The BSE Sensex is currently trading at 18289.45, up by 293.30 points or 1.63% after trading in a range of 18307.57 and 18071.22. There were only 26 stocks advancing against 4 declines on the index.

The broader indices continued to gain ground; the BSE Mid cap and Small cap index were trading up by 0.93% and 0.64% respectively.

The top gaining sectoral indices on the BSE were, Consumer Durables up by 2.05%, Capital Goods up by 1.93%, Metal up by 1.77%, FMCG up by 1.65% and Oil and Gas up by 1.43%. While, Realty down by 0.53% were the top losers indices on the BSE.

The top gainers on the Sensex were, Sesa Goa up by 8.20%, HDFC up by 5.34%, Hindalco Industries up by 4.85%, Bharti Airtel up by 4.07% and L&T up by 3.06%. On the flip side, Coal India down by 1.81%, Infosys down by 0.63%, Wipro down by 0.30% and Cipla down by 0.04% were the top losers on the Sensex.Meanwhile, in a move to contain the widening current account deficit (CAD) of the country, the oil ministry has worked out a plan to renew imports from sanctions-hit Iran, where India pays in rupees and will save $22 billion in the oil import bill. As per the current scenario, 10 million tonnes oil imports from Iran can save $10 billion in foreign exchange outgo. In the last fiscal, India had imported only 13.1 million tonnes of oil from Iran, which was 18.11 million tonnes of 2011-12.

In India, around 80 percent of the total crude oil demand is met through the imports, which has become one of the components responsible for high CAD. India's CAD rose to record high of $88.2 billion or 4.8 percent of the GDP in the previous fiscal.

Meanwhile, India did not import oil from Iran in first four months of the current fiscal as the US and western sanctions blocked all payment routes as India pays Iran in rupees. Presently, India is discussing with Iraq the possibility of trade in local currencies in the view of the current volatility of the rupee against the dollar. Further, the move would also help insulate India's oil imports from Iraq.

The CNX Nifty is currently trading at 5,373.55, up by 88.55 points or 1.68% after trading in a range of 5,376.10 and 5,303.00. There were 41 stocks advancing against 9 declines on the index.

The top gainers of the Nifty were Sesa Goa up by 8.34%, HDFC up by 5.71%, Hindalco Industries up by 4.85%, Bharti Airtel up by 4.22% and Asian Paints up by 3.76%. On the flip side, Coal India down by 1.79%, DLF down by 1.78%, Ranbaxy down by 1.40%, PNB down by 1.29% and JP Associate down by 0.59% were the major losers on the index.

The most of the Asian equity indices were trading in green; Straits Times up by 0.79%, KLSE Composite up by 1.10%, Seoul Composite up by 1.22%, Hang Seng up by 0.61%, Nikkei 225 was up by 0.91%, Jakarta Composite up by 0.75% and Taiwan Weighted up by 1.19%. While, Shanghai Composite down by 0.25% was the lone loser amongst Asian pack.

European shares too got off to a positive start; CAC 40 adding 0.26%, DAX rising by 0.19%  and FTSE 100 surging by 0.74%