Benchmarks make cautious start on penultimate day of F&O expiry

Indian equity benchmarks are trading almost unchanged in early deals on Wednesday as investors opted to stay on the sidelines as it being a penultimate day of September F&O expiry. Though, some support came in with Union Cabinet approving a methodology for auctioning coal blocks, enabling the government to allot coal mining licences through competitive bidding for the first time. Also, RBI in its latest initiative of relaxing norms to raise funds from abroad has said that now all types of companies can avail trade credit facility from overseas for import of capital goods. Earlier, only companies in the infrastructure sector were allowed to raise such trade credits.

However, sluggishness in global markets capped the gains on the up-side for the domestic bourses as the US markets ended mostly in red despite some late hour pullback, the economic reports were weak as the consumer confidence dropped, while the renewed uncertainty about the outlook for the Fed’s asset purchase program also weighed on the sentiments. Moreover, lethargic trade in Asian equity markets too dampening the sentiments with Japanese market trading with a cut of quarter a percent, as investors offloaded their holding at several counters, tracking a weak lead from Wall Street.

Back home, on the sectoral front, capital goods witnessed the maximum gain in trade followed by power and auto, while oil and gas, consumer durables and fast moving consumer goods remained the top losers on the BSE sectoral space. The broader indices were trading slightly in the green, while the market breadth on the BSE was positive; there were 649 shares on the gaining side against 421 shares on the losing side while 63 shares remain unchanged.

The BSE Sensex opened at 19947.43; about 27 points higher compared to its previous closing of 19920.21, and has touched a high and a low of 19978.49 and 19897.15 respectively.

The index is currently trading at 19921.49, up by 1.28 points or 0.01%. There were 19 stocks advancing against 11 declines on the index.

The overall market breadth has made a strong start with 58.85% stocks advancing against 36.25% declines. The broader indices, the BSE Mid cap and Small cap indices were up by 0.10% and 0.26% respectively. 

The top gaining sectoral indices on the BSE were, Capital Goods up by 1.03%, Power up by 0.53%, Auto up by 0.50%, Health Care up by 0.46% and Metal up by 0.26%, while Oil & Gas down by 0.44%, Consumer Durables down by 0.27%, FMCG down by 0.26%, Bankex down by 0.23% and IT down by 0.16% were the only losers on the sectoral index.

The top gainers on the Sensex were Tata Motors up by 2.66%, BHEL up by 2.17%, Hero MotoCorp up by 1.67%, Tata Power up by 1.66% and L&T up by 1.28%. On the flip side, Mahindra & Mahindra was down by 1.32%, HDFC Bank was down by 1.28%, RIL was down by 1.13%, TCS was down by 0.83% and ITC was down by 0.76% were the top losers on the Sensex.

Meanwhile, Exerting pressure on the country’s trade balance again, India's crude oil import increased by 9.5 percent to Rs 3,47,432 crore in the April-August period of the current fiscal on account of sharp depreciation of the rupee against the US dollar. In quantity terms, India imported 81.50 million tonne (MT) crude oil during the reported period, up 8.82 per cent from 74.892 MT in the same period last year. India relies heavily on oil imports as it satisfies around 80 percent of the domestic demand.

Rising oil import bill is a serious concern for the country as it is already struggling with high current account deficit (CAD). Country’s CAD widened to a record high to 4.8 percent in the previous fiscal on account of high gold imports and crude oil prices. For this fiscal, Indian crude oil export is expected to rise to around 196 MT, from 184.79 MT recorded in 2012-13.

India also imported 6.36 MT of petroleum products, mostly LPG, in the first five months of the current fiscal. While, LPG imports stood at 2.4 MT, down from 2.8 MT during the same period a year ago. On exports front, India’s exported $24.404 billion fuel mostly diesel, petrol and naphtha in the reported period.

The CNX Nifty opened at 5,901.55; about 9 point higher as compared to its previous closing of 5,892.45, and has touched a high and a low of 5,910.55 and 5,885.45 respectively.

The index is currently trading at 5,889.55, down by 2.90 points or 0.05%. There were 29 stocks advancing against 20 declines and one stock remains unchanged on the index.

The top gainers of the Nifty were BHEL up by 2.32%, Tata Motors up by 1.93%, Tata Power up by 1.92%, Hero MotoCorp up by 1.75% and L&T up by 1.25%. On the flip side, BPCL down by 4.01%, IDFC down by 1.52%, M&M down by 1.43%, UltraTech Cement down by 1.19% and HDFC Bank down by 1.00% were the major losers on the index.

Most of the Asian equity indices were trading in red; Jakarta Composite declined 45.98 points or 1.03% to 4,414.44, KLSE Composite dropped 6.77 points or 0.38% to 1,785.71, Nikkei 225 shed 36.18 points or 0.25% to 14,696.43, Seoul Composite contracted 14.58 points or 0.73% to 1,992.52 and Taiwan Weighted was down by 30.37 points or 0.37% to 8,268.75.

On the flip side, Shanghai Composite rose 5.86 points or 0.27% to 2,213.39 and Hang Seng was up by 31.20 points or 0.13% to 23,210.24.

Stock markets in South Korea remained shut for trade today.