Benchmarks turn choppy in late morning trade

Benchmarks failed to hold onto morning gains and turned choppy in late-morning trade on Friday as the rupee weakened marginally in early trades against the dollar due to dollar demand from importers. However, positive sentiments continue due to recent measures announced by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) governor Raghuram Rajan. The rupee was trading at Rs 66.11 compared with previous close of Rs 67.09 per dollar.

Global cues too remained supportive with the US markets ending modestly higher ahead of the monthly jobs report, continuing their gaining streak for the third straight day. Asian markets were trading mostly in green at this point of time as investors opted to buy battered down but fundamentally strong stocks. However, the gains remained capped on speculation that the Federal Open Market Committee will dial down bond purchases at its meeting this month if the US employment data is in line with the ADP report. 

Back home, traders were buying, Health Care, Capital Goods, and IT while selling were seen in Auto, Metal and Oil & Gas on the BSE. Meanwhile, the benchmarks NSE Nifty and BSE Sensex were trading near the psychological 5,550 and 19,000 levels respectively. The market breadth on BSE was showing positive trend with advances to declines in the ratio of 980: 575.

The BSE Sensex is currently trading at 19007.00, up by 27.24 points or 0.14% after trading in a range of 19105.86 and 18929.38. 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 0.41% and Small cap index up by 0.61%.

The top gaining sectoral indices on the BSE were, Health Care up by 1.18%, Capital Goods up by 0.95%, IT up by 0.81%, Teck up by 0.80%, and Banking up by 0.15%, while Auto down by 0.84%, Metal down by 0.73%, Oil & Gas down by 0.67%, PSU down by 0.52% and FMCG down by 0.52% were the top losers on the sectoral index.

The top gainers on the Sensex were ICICI Bank up by 3.43%, Cipla up by 2.48%, Wipro up by 2.46%, Infosys up by 1.81% and L&T up by 1.66%.  On the flip side, Coal India was down by 4.18%, Tata Power was down by 3.02% , Mahindra & Mahindra was down by 2.86%, Sesa Goa  was down by 2.82%, and Hindustan Unilever was down by 2.41% were the top losers on the Sensex.

Meanwhile, as per the HSBC survey, based on a review of about 7,500 firms in 16 emerging markets, private sector activity across emerging market economies edged higher in August after losing traction in every month since April, and experiencing outright contraction in July. The composite HSBC Emerging Markets Index (EMI) for services and manufacturing, a monthly indicator derived from the PMI surveys, recovered to 50.7 in August from July crisis at 49.5 on the back of modest improvements in business conditions in China and Russia, which helped it to offset a steep deterioration in India and a marginal worsening in Brazil.

Referring to the Indian market activity, HSBC survey highlighted that India posted the steepest rate of decline in output since March 2009. A group of large emerging economies including India, Indonesia, Brazil and Turkey are grappling with deeper supply-side problems, owing to low infrastructure bottlenecks, domestic savings and loss of competitiveness with rising unit labour costs.  

HSBC survey further said that manufacturing output remained flat in August in emerging economies as fractional rise in China PMI was weighed down by declines in other Asian economies such as Brazil, while, services activity growth also remained weak. The employment level declined further in August as manufacturing workforce shrank for the fourth month running, while service sector staffing declined for the first time in over four years, albeit marginally. The survey also showed that inflationary pressure in emerging economies picked up slightly in August, with input prices increasing at the fastest rate in six months and output prices also rose for the first time in five months.

The CNX Nifty is currently trading at 5,597.05 up by 4.10 points or 0.07% after trading in a range of 5,624.20 and 5,566.15. There were 19 stocks advancing against 31 declines on the index.

The top gainers of the Nifty were ICICI Bank up by 3.50%, Cipla up by 2.60%, Asian Paint up by 2.37%, Ranbaxy up by 2.19%, and Power Grid up by 2.08%. On the flip side, UltraTech Cement down by 3.56%, Coal India down by 3.51%, Tata Power down by 2.45%, M&M down by 2.94% and HUL down by 2.36%, were the major losers on the index.

Most of the Asian equity indices were trading in green; Shanghai Composite rose 6.76 points or 0.32% to 2,129.19, Hang Seng gained 28.36 points or 0.13% to 22,626.33, KLSE Composite increased 3.64 points or 0.21% to 1,724.61, Straits Times strengthened 7.86 points or 0.26% to 3,047.31, Seoul Composite surged 1.81 points or 0.10% to 1,953.65.

On the flip side, Jakarta Composite declined 16.76 points or 0.41% to 4,034.09, Taiwan Weighted was down by 6.10 points or 0.07% to 8,163.00 and Nikkei 225 was down by 218.96 points or 1.56% to 13,851.16.