Benchmarks failed to hold early gains; IT drags

After striking multi-month high in earlier deal, A bout of volatility was witnessed on street as benchmarks failed to maintain their initial gains and turn down to intraday low in negative zone in late morning trade on back of slight profit-taking in the software exporters amid caution ahead of the US Federal Reserve policy meeting and RBI policy review next week. Investor’s sentiment remained dampened as the rupee opened negative this morning on back of month-end dollar demand by the importers. The partially convertible rupee was trading at 61.52 per dollar against the Friday’s close of 61.27 on the Interbank Foreign Exchange. However, the loss on the down -side remained capped as after Reserve Bank of India (RBI) said that it has no immediate plan to close the dollar-swap window for oil companies and it will be done in a calibrated manner

On the global front, most of the Asian markets were trading in the green at this point of time with Japanese Markets trading higher in morning deals after Bank of Japan’s Governor Haruhiko Kuroda maintained an upbeat assessment of the economy, saying it is recovering moderately and will continue to do so .Back home, traders were buying, Capital Goods, Realty and Auto while selling were seen in IT, FMCG and Consumer Durables on the BSE. The market breadth on BSE remains positive with advances to declines in the ratio of 1108: 557. BSE Sensex and NSE Nifty were comfortably trading near their psychological 20,800 and 6,150 levels respectively. 

The BSE Sensex is currently trading at 20857.74, down by 25.15 points or 0.12% after trading in a range of 20970.92 and 20831.17. There were 17 stocks advancing against 13 declines on the index. The broader indices were trading in green; the BSE Mid cap index was up by 0.80% and Small cap index gained 0.97%.

The top gaining sectoral indices on the BSE were, Capital Goods up by 3.28%, Realty up by 3.44%, Auto up by 1.48%, Healthcare up by 0.66% and Metal up by 0.62%, while IT down by 0.77%, FMCG down by 0.76%, Consumer Durables down by 0.71% and Teck down by 0.53% were the top losers on the sectoral index.

The top gainers on the Sensex were L&T up by 4.78%, Maruti Suzuki up by 3.55%, Tata Motors up by 2.64%, Hindalco Industries up by 2.53%, and SSLT up by 1.51%. On the flip side, TCS was down by 1.82%, Jindal Steel was down by 1.80%, ITC was down by 1.55% ,HDFC Bank was down by 1.50%, HDFC was down by 1.36% were the top losers on the Sensex.

Meanwhile, in a big respite to the ailing domestic Aviation sector, the domestic traffic grew for the second consecutive month despite steep fare increases by most airlines. Airlines had raised fares from September 2013 by 25-30%. However, the substantial number of flyers who travelled last month had actually purchased their tickets earlier when fares were low and the steep rise in fare may not have reflected in the numbers but the peak travel months of October-December may see some moderation in flyers due to higher fares.

As per data released by aviation regulator DGCA, traffic grew a healthy 13.4% in September with 45.55 lakh flyers against 40.18 lakh. The industry has seen constant fall in the past three years but witnessed a bounce back in the month of August 2013 with a robust 20.4% increase over the same month last year. Airlines wise, low-cost carrier IndiGo once again proved its superiority and remained the market leader with a 30.3% share in domestic travel in September, Air India closely followed and saw the highest aircraft occupancy for the second month in a row with 20.3% share. Jet Airways (standalone) was at 19.1% and Jet Group (combined with JetLite) 24.3% share of the market, SpiceJet at 17.3% and Go Air held 7.5% of market share.

Performance wise too, Indigo remained number one with 95.9% on time performance at 6 metros, followed by Jet group with 92.3%, SpiceJet 91.7%, GoAir 86.7%, while Air India continued to lag at bottom with 84% on time performance.

However, on the occupancy front though no domestic airline was able to fill even 75% of seats on its planes, Air India topped the chart with 73.2%, followed by IndiGo 70.3%, SpiceJet 67.9%, GoAir 67.5%, Jet 63.7% and JetLite 63%.

The CNX Nifty is currently trading at 6,193.05 up by 3.70 points or 0.06% after trading in a range of 6,218.95 and 6,176.70. There were 32 stocks advancing against 18 declines on the index.

The top gainers of the Nifty were L&T up by 5.20%, DLF up by 4.39%, Maruti Suzuki up by 3.16%, Hindalco up by 2.61% and Tata Motors up by 2.38%. On the flip side, Jindal Steel down by 1.95%, TCS down by 1.92%, ITC down by 1.76%, HDFC down by 1.57%, and HDFC Bank down by 1.38%, were the major losers on the index.

Most of the Asian equity indices were trading in green; Shanghai Composite surged 24.77 points or 1.13% to 2,218.55, Hang Seng strengthened 141.00 points or 0.60% to 23,481.10, Jakarta Composite rose 20.19 points or 0.44% to 4,566.76, Nikkei 225 added 95.63 points or 0.67% to 14,658.81 and Straits Times was up by 1.03 points or 0.07 % to 3,195.00.

On the flip side, KLSE Composite slipped 0.07 points to 1,799.52, Seoul Composite dipped 1.06 points or 0.07% to 8,401.38 and Taiwan Weighted was down by 36.12 points or 0.43% to 38.95.