Markets give up opening gains to trade in red in early deals

Indian equity benchmarks made flat-to-positive start on Tuesday following broadly positive cues from Wall Street overnight as well as mostly positive Asian counterparts as traders reacted to news that the US and China could revive trade talks as soon as this week after US President Donald Trump accused China of violating the trade agreement reached last month. Soon, markets slipped below neutral lines and are trading lower in early deals led by selling in Bankex and Capital Goods counters amid rising geopolitical. Some cautiousness came as the Engineering Export Promotion Council of India said that US President Donald Trump's proposed 50 per cent tariff on steel and aluminium imports could severely impact India's engineering goods' shipments. 

On the sectoral front, sugar stocks are in focus as the sugar industry has demanded a revision of ethanol procurement prices and extension of blending targets beyond 20 per cent, as the sector's contribution to the national ethanol programme has declined sharply from 73 per cent to just 28 per cent. In stock specific development, Frontier Springs jumped on securing orders worth Rs 93 crore from the Rail Coach Factory in Kapurthala and the Modern Coach Factory in Raebareli.

The BSE Sensex is currently trading at 81126.85, down by 246.90 points or 0.30% after trading in a range of 80948.20 and 81774.23. There were 7 stocks advancing against 23 stocks declining on the index.

The broader indices were trading in green; the BSE Mid cap index rose 0.12%, while Small cap index was up by 0.59%.

The gaining sectoral indices on the BSE were Realty up by 0.76%, Basic Materials up by 0.49%, Oil & Gas up by 0.34%, Telecom up by 0.29%, PSU up by 0.19% while, Bankex down by 0.47%, Capital Goods down by 0.44%, Power down by 0.40%, TECK down by 0.36%, FMCG down by 0.26% were the losing indices on BSE.

The top gainers on the Sensex were Mahindra & Mahindra up by 0.80%, HDFC Bank up by 0.28%, Eternal up by 0.15%, Tata Steel up by 0.09% and Reliance Industries up by 0.08%. On the flip side, Larsen & Toubro down by 1.14%, Adani Ports & SEZ down by 1.14%, Hindustan Unilever down by 1.04%, Bajaj Finance down by 1.02% and ICICI Bank down by 0.91% were the top losers.

Meanwhile, expressing optimism over India’s economic growth, G20 Sherpa Amitabh Kant has said that the country’s economy, which is currently $4 trillion in size, is expected to be close to $30 trillion by 2047 and the country also has the advantage of younger demographics. He said ‘The demographics are very young. The Western part of the world is ageing and Japan has already aged, even China is ageing. India is just 28 and even when we become 100, the average age will be 35 years. It is a country of baby boomers’.

According to him, the country is a $4 trillion economy and just became the fourth largest economy in the world. While emphasising about sustainable urbanisation, he said the country will see around 5 million people getting into the process of urbanisation and there will be a need to create 500 new cities in India. He said ‘You need to create two new Americas in the next five decades. You need to create a Chicago every five years in India. That is the challenge for India’.

He also said that India's ambition is to create 400 airports. There are more than 150 operational airports in the country. He noted ‘You need great airports, great airlines, you need them to do long haul... IndiGo and Air India with their wide body aircraft should go out and compete with Emirates, Qatar Airways... We believe in competing in the marketplace’.

The CNX Nifty is currently trading at 24660.60, down by 56.00 points or 0.23% after trading in a range of 24601.30 and 24845.10. There were 13 stocks advancing against 37 stocks declining on the index.

The top gainers on Nifty were Shriram Finance up by 0.83%, Mahindra & Mahindra up by 0.71%, HDFC Bank up by 0.54%, Hindalco up by 0.27% and Bajaj Auto up by 0.22%. On the flip side, Adani Enterprises down by 1.83%, Adani Ports & SEZ down by 1.36%, Coal India down by 1.30%, Larsen & Toubro down by 0.94% and Tata Consumer Products down by 0.90% were the top losers.

Asian markets are trading mostly in green; Hang Seng jumped 262.39 points or 1.13% to 23,420.36, Taiwan Weighted surged 172.04 points or 0.82% to 21,174.75, Nikkei 225 rose 71.16 points or 0.19% to 37,541.83, Shanghai Composite added 15.99 points or 0.48% to 3,363.48 and Jakarta Composite was up by 1.62 points or 0.02% to 7,066.69, while Straits Times was down by 1.1 points or 0.03% to 3,889.49.