Benchmarks continue to remain firm on Fed's surprise decision

Benchmarks continue to remain firm on significant buying among financials and capital goods shares. Markets reacted on a strong note after US Fed decided not to taper its asset-buying program. Fed said it needs to see more evidence of improvement in the US economy.

Global cues too remained supportive with the US markets closing significantly higher in last session, as Fed refrained from tapering stimulus program at its highly anticipated monetary policy meeting. Moreover, Asian equity indices were rallying at this point of time with Japanese Nikkei trading higher by over one and a half percent as the country’s exports climbed 14.7 percent year on year, beating expectations for an increase of 14.5 percent after collecting 12.2 percent in the previous month.

Back home, traders were buying, Bankex, Realty and Auto on the BSE. BSE Sensex and NSE Nifty were comfortably trading near their psychological 6,000 and 20,000 levels respectively. Shares of rate sensitive sectors such as automobiles, real estate, infrastructure and banking have rallied up to 17% on hopes that the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) may roll back its tightening measures taken in order to contain the forex volatility in its monetary policy review on tomorrow.

The market breadth on BSE remains strongly in favour of gainers with advances to declines in the ratio of 1087:532.The BSE Sensex is currently trading at 20484.85, up by 522.69 points or 2.62% after trading in a range of 20567.61 and 20347.30. There were 28 stocks advancing against 2 declines on the index. The broader indices were trading in green; the BSE Mid cap index was up by 1.56% and Small cap index gained 0.93%.

The top gaining sectoral indices on the BSE were, Bankex up by 6.40%, Realty up by 5.03%, Auto up by 2.67%, Capital Goods up by 2.51% and PSU up by 2.42%, while there were no losers on the sectoral index.

The top gainers on the Sensex were ICICI Bank up by 8.13%, SBI up by 6.16%, Maruti Suzuki up by 6.16%, Bharti Airtel up by 4.97% and Tata Steel up by 4.58%, On the flip side, Wipro was down by 0.76% and Dr Reddys Lab was down by 0.13%  were the only losers on the Sensex.

Meanwhile, Net direct tax collection increased by 12.5 percent to Rs 2.38 lakh crore in first six months (April 1 to September 17) of the current fiscal on the back of high growth in personal income tax collection. The net direct tax collection was Rs 2.11 lakh crore in the same period of previous fiscal.

Categories wise, collection of securities transaction tax (STT) and wealth tax stood at Rs 2,210 crore and Rs 309 crore respectively in April 1 to September 17 period of current fiscal. While, the corporate direct tax collection grew by 7.97 percent to Rs 1.46 lakh crore in the reported period. Moreover, personal income tax realisation increased by 21.08 percent to Rs 89,006 crore.

The advance tax collection in the July to September quarter grew by 9.14 percent to over Rs 1.14 lakh crore in which corporate sector contributed Rs 1.03 lakh crore, up 7.97 percent as compared to an increase of 4.5 percent during the same period last year. The top corporates of advance tax during the quarter was ONGC, SBI, Reliance Industries, Life Insurance Corporation and HDFC Bank. 

The government has fixed a direct tax collection target of Rs 6.68 lakh crore for the current fiscal, up from Rs 5.65 lakh crore in the previous fiscal. In order to boost the tax revenue, the government is doing all efforts include issuing notices to tax evaders and set advertising campaign etc. Further, the government is addressing hurdles like human resources, technology and time to improve tax collection.

The CNX Nifty is currently trading at 6,071.75 up by 172.30 points or 2.92% after trading in a range of 6,092.70 and 6,040.15. There were 49 stocks advancing against 1 decline on the index.

The top gainers of the Nifty were ICICI Bank up by 8.11%, Axis Bank up by 7.42%, PNB up by 7.37%, Kotak Mahindra Bank up by 7.15% and DLF up by 6.98%.On the flip side, NMDC down by 1.76% was the only loser on the index.

The Asian equity indices were trading in green; Hang Seng surged 394.67 points or 1.71% to 23,512.12, Jakarta Composite zoomed 198.24 points or 4.44% to 4,661.49, KLSE Composite strengthened 18.68 points or 1.05% to 1,790.08, Nikkei 225 soared 185.70 points or 1.28% to 14,691.06 and Straits Times was up by 51.49 points or 1.61% to 3,245.34.

Stock markets in China, Taiwan and South Korea remained shut for the trade today on account of public holidays.