Benchmarks remain subdued in late morning trade

Volatility roost on street as the Benchmarks were trading narrow range with Sensex and Nifty swinging between negative and positive zone in late morning trade. Sentiments got dampened as the rupee was trading marginally weak in early trades due to month-end dollar demand from importers. The rupee was trading at Rs 61.49 compared with previous close of Rs 61.47 per dollar. Meanwhile, Investors remained cautious with Finance minister P Chidambaram asking financial sector regulators to put in place all possible measures to avoid any adverse impact on India from the US scaling back its stimulus programme, which he expects 'sooner or later'. However, the loss on the down -side remained capped as the statement of Prime Minister’s key economic advisory council chairman C Rangarajan, who while rejecting the IMF and World Bank’s pessimistic projections, has exuded confidence that the growth would be around 5.5 percent in the current fiscal.

On the global front, all the Asian equity benchmarks were trading in the negative terrain in early deals on Friday as investors remained concerned amid uncertainty about the near-term outlook for the markets following the recent uptrend. Back home, traders were buying, IT and Teck while selling were seen in Capital Goods, Realty and Metal on the BSE. The market breadth on BSE remains negative with advances to declines in the ratio of 815:872. BSE Sensex and NSE Nifty were comfortably trading near their psychological 20,600 and 6,100 levels respectively. 

The BSE Sensex is currently trading at 20687.87, down by 37.56 points or 0.18% after trading in a range of 20733.82 and 20645.00. There were 10 stocks advancing against 20 declines on the index. The broader indices were trading in red; the BSE Mid cap index was down by 0.08% and Small cap index lost 0.07%.

The top gaining sectoral indices on the BSE were, IT up by 0.99% and  Teck up by 0.55%  while Capital Goods down by 1.70%, Realty down by 1.45% , Metal down by 1.06%,  Auto down by 0.92% and Healthcare down by 0.74% were the top losers on the sectoral index.

The top gainers on the Sensex were Wipro up by 2.25%, TCS up by 1.61%, SSLT up by 1.23%, ICICI Bank up by 0.81% and Infosys up by 0.77%. On the flip side, Hindalco Industries was down by 3.23%, BHEL was down by 2.46%, Mahindra & Mahindra was down by 2.23%, Tata Steel was down by 2.14% and  L&T was down by 2.10% were the top losers on the Sensex.

Meanwhile, in clear sign of dispute, the Department of Telecom (DoT) has written to the PMO, rejecting to telecom regulator TRAI's recommendations for having an Extended GSM (EGSM) band in the 800MHz spectrum already used by CDMA operators, on the grounds of its unfeasibility. The former, after examining TRAI’s recommendations and as per initial findings, found the recommendation to adopt EGSM in the available CDMA band for providing telecom services, as 'technically unfeasible', which would not allow any fresh sale for CDMA players.

Meanwhile, TRAI's recommendations against a fresh auction in the 800 MHz has already drawn flak from Sistema Shyam Teleservices (SSTL), a key CDMA player that offers services under the MTS brand and wants to further expand beyond the nine circles it currently operates. As per the company, TRAI’s recommendation is clearly unfair and discriminatory and goes against the spirit of providing a level-playing field. The company has consistently maintained that it does not agree with the recommendations of TRAI specific to the 800 MHz spectrum band.

Further, DoT’s secretary has also informed PMO that it had requested TRAI to recommend a reserve price for auction of spectrum in the 800 MHz band, especially after SSTL indicated that the reserve price in the previous sale (in March) was 'unreasonably high' when compared to the new reserve price, and that the later clearly refused to make any fresh recommendation on this.

The CNX Nifty is currently trading at 6,145.45 down by 18.90 points or 0.31% after trading in a range of 6,161.10 and 6,133.85. There were 13 stocks advancing against 37 declines on the index.

The top gainers of the Nifty were HCL Tech up by 2.40%, Wipro up by 2.10%, TCS up by 1.69%, and Ranbaxy up by 1.26%. On the flip side, NMDC down by 4.39%, Hindalco down by 3.32%, DLF down by 2.86%, BPCL down by 2.73% and BHEL down by 2.71% were the major losers on the index.

The Asian equity indices were trading in red; Shanghai Composite declined 20.82 points or 0.96% to 2,143.50, Hang Seng dropped 121.89 points or 0.53% to 22,713.93, Jakarta Composite dipped 16.88  points or 0.37% to 4,577.96, KLSE Composite slipped 4.44 points or 0.24% to 1,814.49, Nikkei 225 tumbled 335.70 points or 2.32% to 14,161.59, Straits Times decreased 4.49 points or 0.14% to 3,213.46, Seoul Composite contracted 17.83 points or 0.87% to 2,028.86 and Taiwan Weighted was down by 74.94 points or 0.89% to 8,338.78.