Barometer gauges witness profit-booking at higher level; cool off from day’s high level

Barometer gauges, although holding steady, have come off their day’s highest point as select investors have started booking their profits on higher levels after Moody Investors Service, while retaining its stable outlook of India’s lowest investment grading, warned that country’s could be downgraded if the government adopts policies that harm fiscal and growth scenario. Nevertheless, the underlying mood of the bourses continues to be sanguine, regardless of negative regional counterparts, after exit polls placed BJP ahead in state election assembly. Some portion of bourses’ gains also were tempered with after no business could be transacted on the first day of Parliament's Winter Session, which began on Thursday, as the opposition strongly opposed the centre's move to bring the Anti-Communal Violence Bill among other important legislations. Now trading at day’s lowest point, Sensex and Nifty, are holding above the psychological 21,000 and 6,250 levels respectively with gains of over a percent and half. Meanwhile, broader indices, in-line with larger peers, too trimmed some of their gains and now were trading up by close to half a percent.

On the global front, Asian markets were trading mostly in negative terrain as never-ending speculation about the fate of US stimulus lifted bond yields globally, while Japanese shares struggled to find their footing after a spill.  Additionally, some amount of caution was also witnessed ahead of central bank meetings in the European Union and UK, and the latest reading on US economic growth and the payrolls numbers on Friday.

Closer home, amidst the secular bump-up, where stocks from defensive Healthcare and Information technology counters were the only weak spells of trade, stocks from Fast Moving Consumer Goods (FMCG) have now added to the list of losers. On the flip side, Banking, Capital Goods and Realty pivotals, witnessing maximum buying interest are retaining markets’ charm. The overall market breadth on BSE was in the favour of advances which continued to outpace declines in the ratio of 1353:457; while 27 shares remained unchanged.

The BSE Sensex is currently trading at 21010.83, up by 302.12 points or 1.46% after trading in a range of 21,165.60 and 20985.01. There were 22 stocks advancing against 8 stocks declining on the index.

The broader indices too trimmed portion of their gains; the BSE Mid cap and Small cap indexes gained by 0.61% and 0.43% respectively.

The gaining sectoral indices on the BSE were Bankex up by 4.28%, Capital Goods up by 3.05%, Realty up by 1.79%, PSU up by 1.70% and Power up by 1.41%. While, Healthcare down by 1.03% IT down by 0.24%, and FMCG down by 0.09% were the only losing indices on BSE.

The top gainers on the Sensex were ICICI Bank up by 6.56%, HDFC Bank up by 4.10%, BHEL up by 3.96%, Coal India up by 3.86% and L&T up by 3.83%. On the flip side, Dr Reddy’s Lab and Sun Pharma were down by 1.50% each, NTPC down by 0.72%, Wipro down by 0.48% and ITC down by 0.38%.

Meanwhile, the country’s GSM mobile operators have added 16.6 lakh new subscribers in rural areas in October, taking their overall user base in such areas to 27.43 crore, which represents 0.61% growth as compared to previous month.

According to data released by the Cellular Operators’ Association of India (COAI), among all the telecom operators, Vodafone added the maximum of 7.7 lakh new users, taking its rural subscriber base to 8.39 crore at the end of October, following it was Bharti Airtel, which added 6 lakh new users during the month and its base stood at 8.74 crore. Meanwhile, Idea Cellular and Aircel added 3.7 lakh and 60,000 new users to take their respective base to 6.95 crore and 2.33 crore. However, Uninor lost 1.4 lakh rural subscribers during the month, which led to a contraction in its base to 1.01 crore at the end of October.

Further, COAI data revealed that total rural subscribers as on September 2013 stood at 35.66 crore of which 35.03 crore are wireless and 63.1 lakh are wireline users. Meanwhile, total rural teledensity stood at 41.70 per cent as on September 2013.

The CNX Nifty is currently trading at 6,254.55, up by 93.60 points or 1.52% after trading in a range of 6,300.55 and 6,247.10. There were 38 stocks advancing against 12 declining stocks on the index.

The top gainers of the Nifty were ICICI Bank up by 6.35%, IDFC up by 5.98%, HDFC Bank up by 4.23%, BHEL up by 4.04% and L&T up by 3.92%. On the flip side, Sun Pharma down by 1.62%, Dr Reddy’s Lab down by 1.51%, Lupin down by 0.95%, Ranbaxy down by 0.93% and HCL Technologies down by 0.86% were the major losers on the index.

Most of the Asian equity indices were trading in red; Nikkei 225 down by 1.50%, Straits Times down by 1.00%, Hang Seng down by 0.31%, Seoul Composite down by 0.10%, Jakarta Composite down by 1.18%, and Taiwan Weighted down by 0.50%. While, KLSE Composite up by 0.22% and Shanghai Composite up by 0.05% were the only gainers