Markets manage to garner some gains in late trade

Indian equity markets managed to garner gains during late afternoon deals, supported by gains in PSU bank, FMCG and Metal stocks. The private reports indicated that the US government is considering adjustments to its steel and aluminium tariffs have favoured the metal stocks, while gains in ITC and Godfrey Phillips India stocks after reports indicating price hike of cigarettes have contributed in BSE FMCG index surging 1.06%. Besides, investors remained optimistic as India and France have elevated their ties to a ‘special global strategic partnership’ with Prime Minister Narendra Modi and French President Emmanuel Macron undertaking significant ramp up of bilateral cooperation in areas of defence, trade and technology. However, gains were limited as losses in IT stocks weighed on the sentiments.

On the global front, Japanese and Indonesian markets were trading higher, as Iran-U.S. nuclear talks showed progress and Japan clocked a smaller-than-expected trade deficit in January. European equity markets were trading higher as geopolitical tensions eased, and investors reacted to reports of a leadership change at the European Central Bank. 

The BSE Sensex is currently trading at 83612.98, up by 162.02 points or 0.19% after trading in a range of 83163.62 and 83661.68. There were 20 stocks advancing against 11 stocks declining on the index.

The top gaining sectoral indices on the BSE were Metal up by 1.26%, FMCG up by 1.06%, Capital Goods up by 0.83%, Basic Materials up by 0.81% and Industrials up by 0.76%, while IT down by 1.21%, TECK down by 0.75%, Consumer Discretionary down by 0.13% and Consumer Durables down by 0.06% were the top losing indices on BSE.

The top gainers on the Sensex were Kwality Walls (India) up by 4.99%, Tata Steel up by 3.00%, ITC up by 2.15%, Axis Bank up by 1.21% and Reliance Industries up by 0.94%. On the flip side, Eternal down by 2.27%, Tech Mahindra down by 1.73%, Infosys down by 1.22%, Adani Ports & SEZ down by 1.09% and HCL Technologies down by 1.06% were the top losers.

Meanwhile, the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) Secretary, S Krishnan, has said that the government invested in creating indigenous and sovereign artificial intelligence (AI) models such as BharatGen initiative, to address bias and to ensure that India has AI systems trained primarily on Indian data. He said ‘sovereignty is a very important issue, and India needs to have AI models where nobody else has the kill switch, and it was always with us.’

According to him, a country of India's size must have control over the way AI models function. He said Initially, there was a debate over whether India should actually invest in creating indigenous or sovereign models or should it use open source models which have been created elsewhere in the world, because creating an indigenous model was felt to be expensive and time-consuming.

The secretary further said but after some discussion and debate, India went ahead and created its own AI models for certain important reasons. He said ‘first and foremost is to address the issue of bias...Making sure that we have models which are based primarily on Indian data and data which is created in a multiplicity of Indian languages. That is very critical.’  He said the second reason is India's linguistic diversity, as people would prefer to access AI in their own languages.

The CNX Nifty is currently trading at 25779.10, up by 53.70 points or 0.21% after trading in a range of 25645.15 and 25792.85. There were 31 stocks advancing against 19 stocks declining, while 1 stock was unchanged on the index.

The top gainers on Nifty were Kwality Walls (India) up by 4.97%, Tata Steel up by 3.03%, HDFC Life Insurance up by 2.87%, ITC up by 2.04% and Tata Consumer Products up by 1.45%. On the flip side, ONGC down by 2.63%, Eternal down by 2.20%, Wipro down by 2.02%, Tech Mahindra down by 1.75% and Adani Enterprises down by 1.66% were the top losers.

Japanese and Indonesian markets were trading higher; Nikkei 225 surged 770.51 points or 1.34% to 57,337.00 and Jakarta Composite gained 83.86 points or 1.01% to 8,296.13.

European equity markets were trading higher; UK’s FTSE 100 increased 77.58 points or 0.73% to 10,633.75, France’s CAC rose 44.96 points or 0.54% to 8,361.46 and Germany’s DAX gained 197.49 points or 0.79% to 24,998.40.