Benchmarks continue to trade in green

Benchmarks continued to trade in a positive bias in late morning trade. Investor’s sentiments got some support after Finance Minister P Chidambaram’s confidence that India’s current account deficit (CAD) will be contained below $60 billion this financial year as against an earlier estimate of $70 billion. On the global front, most of the Asian equity benchmarks were trading in the green at this point of time the Japanese market though has trimmed its losses ahead of the release of a slew of corporate earnings reports.

Back home, traders were buying, IT, Healthcare and Teck while selling were seen in Bankex, Metal and Realty on the BSE. The IT pack was in most jubilant mood after the global IT major Cognizant Technology Solutions Corp reported a better-than-expected 22 percent rise in revenue, helped by contracts from insurers setting up online exchanges as part of President Barack Obama's healthcare reforms and raised its full-year forecast for both profit and revenue. The market breadth on BSE remains positive with advances to declines in the ratio of 1057: 582. BSE Sensex and NSE Nifty were comfortably trading near their psychological 21,000 and 6,250 levels respectively.

The BSE Sensex is currently trading at 21005.00, up by 30.21 points or 0.14% after trading in a range of 21045.38 and 20944.50. There were 15 stocks advancing against 15 declines on the index. The broader indices were trading in green; the BSE Mid cap index was up by 0.55% and Small cap index gained 0.95%.

The top gaining sectoral indices on the BSE were, IT up by 1.19%, Healthcare up by 1.15%, Teck up by 0.98%, Power up by 0.89% and Consumer Durables up by 0.54% while Bankex down by 0.58%, Metal down by 0.57%, Realty down by 0.41%, Oil & Gas down by 0.37% and Capital Goods down by 0.03%  were the top losers on the sectoral index.

The top gainers on the Sensex were Sun Pharma up by 2.33%, TCS up by 1.96%, Tata Power up by 1.86%, Wipro up by 1.53% and Cipla up by 1.39%. On the flip side, Bajaj Auto was down by 1.65%, SSLT was down by 1.56%, Hindalco Industries was down by 1.39%, HDFC was down by 1.05% and Hindustan Unilever was down by 0.75% were the top losers on the Sensex.

Meanwhile, Commodity market regulator, the Forward Markets Commission (FMC) has removed an additional 5 percent margin on the future contracts of gold and silver due to less volatility in prices of these commodities. The regulator has also removed additional margins from crude oil, brent crude oil, natural gas, aluminium, copper, lead, nickel and zinc traded on the six national commodity exchanges till further orders.

FMC said in a circular that since the price volatility has subdued in the recent past, the Commission has decided to remove the additional margin of 5%. The removal of margins on these commodities will be effective from November 7.

The additional margin on future contracts of gold, silver, brent crude oil, crude oil and natural gas was imposed on August 29 this year, a day after gold touched the all time high of Rs 34,500 per ten grams in the intraday trade, while on base metals namely aluminium, copper, lead, nickel and zinc, it was imposed on September 3 this year to tackle volatility in the market. 

The CNX Nifty is currently trading at 6,256.40 up by 3.25 points or 0.05% after trading in a range of 6,269.70 and 6,239.65. There were 24 stocks advancing against 26 declines on the index.

The top gainers of the Nifty were Sun Pharmaceuticals up by 2.69%, Tata Power up by 1.86%, TCS up by 1.69%, Cipla up by 1.43%, and Wipro up by 1.33%. On the flip side, IndusInd Bank down by 1.97%, SSLT down by 1.61%, Ambuja Cements down by 1.53%, DLF down by 1.52% and JP Associates down by 1.52% were the major losers on the index.

Most of the Asian equity indices were trading in green; Hang Seng was up by 63.92 points or 0.28% to 23,102.87, Jakarta Composite was up by 5.06 points or 0.11% to 4,428.35, Taiwan Weighted has gained 13.15 points or 0.16% to 8,275.35, Nikkei 225 up by 139.38 points or 0.98% to 14,363.19 and Seoul Composite was up by 4.62 points or 0.23% to 2,018.55.

On the flip side, Shanghai Composite was down by 0.07 points to 2,157.17, KLSE Composite lost 3.20 points or 0.18% to 1,804.27 and Straits Times dropped 3.80 points or 0.13% to 3,202.60.