Benchmarks extend losses in late morning

Benchmarks have extended losses in the late morning deals due to as profit-taking continues for a second day after record highs hit on Monday. Sentiments remained dampened after the rupee snapped its five-day rising streak against the American currency and fell by 29 paise at 61.33 per dollar in early trades today at the Interbank Foreign Exchange market on fresh dollar demand by importers. On the global front, All the Asian equity markets were trading in the red terrain at this point of time tracking weak cues from Wall Street. Meanwhile, Japanese market was trading lower as the Core machine orders despite gaining 0.6 percent in the month of October missed the forecast.

Back home, traders were buying, FMCG and Consumer Durables while selling was seen in Capital Goods, Oil & Gas and Bankex on the BSE. Moreover, selling in Auto space too weighed down sentiments after car sales in India fell 8 percent to 1.42 lakh units in November from 1.55 lakh units a year ago, the second consecutive month of decline as demand fell after the festive season. Additionally, select power stocks struggling to get some traction after the central power regulator issued a new set of draft tariff guidelines for state-owned power utilities, wherein some of the operational norms have been tightened and the financial incentives for achieving transmission and generation targets have been sharply pruned. The new guidelines will be applicable for five years starting April 2014.

The market breadth on BSE remains negative with advances to declines in the ratio of 826:877. BSE Sensex and NSE Nifty were comfortably trading near their psychological 21,100 and 6,250 levels respectively.

The BSE Sensex is currently trading at 21132.92 down by 122.34 points or 0.58% after trading in a range of 21200.51 and 21110.96. There were 11 stocks advancing against 19 declines on the index. The broader indices were trading mixed; the BSE Mid cap index was lost by 0.04% and Small cap index gained  0.11%.

The top gaining sectoral indices on the BSE were, FMCG up by 0.32% and Consumer Durables up by 0.04%, while Capital Goods down by 1.22%, Oil & Gas down by 1.04%, Bankex down by 1.03%, Realty down by 0.81% and Auto down by 0.60% were the top losers on the sectoral index.

The top gainers on the Sensex were NTPC up by 2.61%, Jindal Steel up by 1.66%, Bajaj Auto up by 0.79%, ITC up by 0.71% and Maruti Suzuki up by 0.67%. On the flip side, Tata Motors was down by 2.51%, ONGC was down by 2.00%, BHEL was down by 1.60%,  L&T was down by 1.53%, and Gail India was down by 1.43% were the top losers on the Sensex.

Meanwhile, Concerned over acute liquidity crunch faced by the Indian fertiliser sector, the fertiliser industry has urged the Government to immediately allocate an additional Rs 40,000 crore to clear the subsidy dues for the current fiscal to help resolving the payment crisis faced by the industry. The ministry has pegged the subsidy requirement at Rs 1.07 lakh crore for the current fiscal including the arrears of Rs 32,000 crore out of which the Government had allocated only Rs 65,971 crore subsidy for the current fiscal, marginally lower than the previous year.

Further, the industry has said that the Government should make adequate budgetary allocation for 2014-15 keeping in view the realistic estimate for the current fiscal year and also make provision for providing interest on delayed payment of subsidy and freight bills beyond the prescribed time-limit of 45 days.

Meanwhile, in order to boost the fertilizer sector, the government has taken measures such as banking arrangement of Rs 5,500 crore of which fertiliser companies will get short-term credit from banks at a lower interest rate to partially address the payment crisis. Furthermore, it is also considering an additional Rs 10,000 crore more under the special banking arrangement against the subsidy due for the current year. Regarding the gas availability to fertilizer sector, the government has recently stated that the gas allocation policy will be revised to remove the cap imposed on the supply of domestic gas to fertiliser sector and accorded priority for gas utilisation policy 2008 in order to make new investments in the sect

The CNX Nifty is currently trading at 6,297.15 down by 35.70 points or 0.56% after trading in a range of 6,313.25 and 6,286.70. There were 11 stocks advancing against 39 stock declines on the index. 

The  top gainers of the Nifty were NTPC up by 2.57%, Jindal Steel  up by 1.88%, HCL Tech up by 1.32%, ITC up by 0.74% and  Lupin up by 0.65%. On the flip side, Tata Motors down by 2.60%, IDFC down by 2.24%, DLF down by 2.12%, ONGC down by 2.08% and IndusInd Bank down by 1.87% were the major losers on the index.

The Asian equity indices were trading in red; Shanghai Composite declined 28.66 points or 1.28% to 2,211.88, Hang Seng dropped 295.48 points or 1.24% to 23,448.71, Jakarta Composite dipped 10.04 points or 0.23% to 4,265.64, Nikkei 225 tumbled 107.10  points or 0.69% to 15,505.77, Straits Times shed 9.00 points or 0.29% to 3,072.72, KLSE Composite slipped 0.40 points or 0.02% to 1,843.45, Seoul Composite contracted 10.68 points or 0.54% to 1,982.77 and Taiwan Weighted was down by 20.77 points or 0.25% to 8,422.62.