Sensex, Nifty continue to trade in green

After opening lower, benchmarks recovered shortly and turned green despite international rating agencies -- Moody's and Fitch-- yesterday downgraded the debt rating of the country's top three public sector banks -- State Bank of India, Bank of Baroda and Punjab National Bank -- citing worsening credit quality and recapitalisation concerns.

global cues remained choppy with the US markets closing lower on Monday, pulling off from their last week’s high as traders went on to cash in on the recent gains. While, most of the Asian equity benchmarks are trading lower at this point of time as investors remained concerned about the debate on the US fiscal position after Senate is considering a measure to cut off funding for Obama’s healthcare law.

Back home, traders were buying, Capital Goods, Auto and Consumer Durables while selling were seen in Oil & Gas on the BSE. BSE Sensex and NSE Nifty were comfortably trading near their psychological 5,900 and 19,950 levels respectively.

The market breadth on BSE remains positive with advances to declines in the ratio of 859:585. The BSE Sensex is currently trading at 19992.37, up by 91.41 points or 0.46% after trading in a range of 20050.42 and 19782.78. There were 19 stocks advancing against 11 declines on the index. The broader indices were trading in green; the BSE Mid cap index was up by 0.46% and Small cap index gained 0.34%.

The gaining sectoral indices on the BSE were, Capital Goods up by 1.24%, Auto up by 1.13%, Consumer Durables up by 0.96%, Power up by 0.84% and Oil & Gas up by 0.79%, while, Oil & Gas down by 0.10%  there was losers on the sectoral index.

The top gainers on the Sensex were Maruti Suzuki up by 2.14%, Tata Motors up by 1.84%, L&T up by 1.42%, BHEL up by 1.35% and Tata Power up by 1.33%. On the flip side, SBI was down by 1.90%, Sun Pharma was down by 1.51%, Jindal Steel was down by 1.31%, HDFC Bank was down by 0.97% and Sesa Goa was down by 0.95% were the top losers on the Sensex.

Meanwhile, Assuring investors that country’s fiscal deficit will remain within target limit, the Department of Economic Affairs (DEA) Secretary Arvind Mayaram has said that the government will be able to meet its disinvestment target of Rs 54,000 crore for the current fiscal despite high volatility in the market. Presently, disinvestment proceeds are of great importance to the government as it has set target to contain fiscal deficit at 4.8 percent of GDP in the current financial year.

The government has set a target of Rs 40,000 crore from selling its shares in public sector units (PSUs) and Rs 14,000 crore for its stake sale in private companies. Till now, the government has raised only Rs 1,325 crore by divesting stake in public sector undertakings include Neyveli Lignite Corporation (NLC), State Trading Corporation (STC), MMTC, and ITDC. The government has raised Rs 23,920 crore through disinvestment in the previous fiscal.

Further, in order to cut government spending in non-critical areas, the government has recently announced a slew of austerity measures including banning government departments for holding meetings in 5-star hotels among others. In the previous financial year, the government was able to contain the fiscal deficit at 4.89 percent of GDP, against the budgeted target of 5.1 percent of GDP.

The CNX Nifty is currently trading at 5,920.40 up by 30.65 points or 0.52% after trading in a range of 5,938.40 and 5,854.55. There were 36 stocks advancing against 14 declines on the index.

The top gainers of the Nifty were Asian Paint up by 2.96%, Maruti Suzuki up by 2.56%, Tata Motors up by 2.13%, Ultra Cement up by 2.12% and Indus Ind bank up by 1.80%. On the flip side, SBI down by 1.80%, Jindal Steel down by 1.40%, Sun Pharmaceuticals down by 1.38%, BPCL down by 1.24% and Sesa Goa down by 0 .95% were the major losers on the index.

The Asian equity indices were trading in red; Shanghai Composite declined 21.47 points or 0.97% to 2,199.57, Hang Seng dropped 223.49 points or 0.96% to 23,148.05, Jakarta Composite shed 43.82 points or 0.96% to 4,519.04, KLSE Composite dipped 6.55 points or 0.36% to 1,789.81, Nikkei 225 contracted 40.54 points or 0.27% to 14,701.88, Straits Times slipped 1.50 points or 0.06% to 14,701.88, Seoul Composite decreased 8.81 points or 0.44% to 2,000.54  and Taiwan Weighted was down by 2.56 points or 0.03% to 8,290.27.