Domestic bourses trade higher in early deals on Friday

Indian equity benchmarks are trading higher in early deals on Friday, with frontline gauges gaining around half a percent as sentiments remained up-beat after finance minister P Chidambaram said that India is better prepared than in May to deal with any consequences of the US Federal Reserve’s move to wind down its economic stimulus. He also said that "Government is of the view that the markets had already factored in the US Federal Reserve's decisions and, therefore, is not likely to be surprised by these moderate changes." The market sentiment also got boosted by data showing that foreign funds made heavy purchases of Indian stocks on December 19, 2013. Foreign institutional investors (FIIs) bought shares worth a net Rs 2264.11 crore on Thursday. However, gains remained capped as some pessimism came in on report that the United Nations has lowered India’s economic growth forecast for 2013 to 4.8 percent while warning that emerging markets should be prepared to deal with the impact of US Federal Reserve's quantitative easing programme.

On the global front, the US markets made a flat closing in last session with major indices giving up their gains in latter part of the trade. While, most of the Asian equity indices were trading in the red at this point of time on account of lack of fresh triggers from the region and some profit taking were also contributing to the lackluster trade in some of the markets. Meanwhile, the Japanese market drifted lower in early deals as investors remained on sidelines ahead of the outcome of the Bank of Japan’s two-day policy meeting that ends later in the day.

Back home, Sugar stocks remained on the buyers’ radar with scrips like, Rana Sugars, Shree Renuka Sugars, Balrampur Chini, Bajaj Hindusthan, etc edged higher as the Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs (CCEA) approved an interest-free loan of Rs 6,600 crore for the ailing sugar industry to pay off cane arrears. On the sectoral front, oil and gas witnessed the maximum gain in trade followed by software and technology, while fast moving consumer goods and capital goods remained the only losers on the BSE sectoral space. The broader indices too were trading in-line with benchmarks, while the market breadth on the BSE was positive; there were 767 shares on the gaining side against 377 shares on the losing side while 46 shares remain unchanged.

The BSE Sensex opened at 20792.37; about 83 points higher compared to its previous closing of 20708.62, and touched a high and a low of 20825.72 and 20745.94 respectively.

The index is currently trading at 20805.27, up by 96.65 points or 0.47%. There were 20 stocks advancing against 9 declines and one stock remains unchanged on the index.

The overall market breadth has made a strong start with 70.57% stocks advancing against 25.61% declines. The broader indices too were trading in green; the BSE Mid cap index up was by 0.65% and Small cap gained 0.66%. 

The top gaining sectoral indices on the BSE were, Oil & Gas up by 1.37%, IT up by 1.20%, Teck up by 0.91%, Realty up by 0.84% and PSU up by 0.81%, while FMCG down by 0.52% and Capital Goods down by 0.17% were the top losers on the sectoral index.

The top gainers on the Sensex were ONGC up by 1.61%,  RIL up by 1.56%, Wipro up by 1.42%, TCS up by 1.38% and ICICI Bank up by 1.20%. On the flip side, Sun Pharma was down by 1.26%, ITC was down by 0.91%, Bharti Airtel was down by 0.74%, SSLT was down by 0.73% and L&T was down by 0.54% were the top losers on the Sensex.

Meanwhile, besides committing more steps to boost economy, Finance Minister highlighted that the initiatives taken by the government in the past one year are expected to fetch result as this would do its bit to boost investment and revive the sagging growth. In an attempt to shore-up investors’ confidence after US Federal Reserve announced to trim down its aggressive bond-buying program by $10 billion a month, the Finance Minister reiterated  that the government was committed to take all necessary steps to revive growth, boost investment, create conducive business environment, improving efficiency and depth of the markets, wider participation of investors and strengthening of the regulatory and institutional framework to channelize greater investments and to achieve potential growth of the Indian economy.

Listing out the initiatives taken by the government in the past one year to boost growth, Finance Minister underscored that the economy is headed towards gradual recovery and growth stabilization, after slipping to a decade’s low level of 5% in 2012-13. He highlighted that the government in consultation with RBI and SEBI made concerted efforts and instituted several measures to attract off-shore portfolio investment and improve investors' appetite.

Further, on account of policies to promote inclusive growth, FM unveiled that the proportion of people living below the poverty line declined from 37.2% in 2004-05 to 21.9% in 2011-12 and also added that this decline, had been at a much faster rate than the previous decades. Additionally, he underscored that Cabinet Committee on Investment (CCI), in order to boost investment, de-bottlenecked 200 projects, while Project Monitoring Group (PMG) had resolved 93 projects with total estimated cost of Rs 3.53 lakh crore.

Lastly, he also brought to light the initiatives, like settling up of Infrastructure Debt Funds (IDF), authorising PSUs to issue tax-free bonds, enhancement of the FII limits, among others to boost investment and growth.  

The CNX Nifty opened at 6,179.95; about 13 points lower as compared to its previous closing of 6,166.65, and has touched a high and a low of 6,195.25 and 6,170.35 respectively. The index is currently trading at 6,191.50, up by 24.85 points or 0.40%. There were 34 stocks advancing against 16 declines on the index.

The top gainers of the Nifty were TCS up by 1.66%, Reliance Industries up by 1.61%, ONGC up by 1.59%, Wipro up by 1.35% and Cairn up by 1.34%. On the flip side, Grasim down by 1.53%, Sun Pharmaceuticals down by 1.30%, Bharti Airtel down by 0.85%, SSLT down by 0.83% and ITC down by 0.77% were the top losers on the index.

Most of the Asian equity indices were trading in red; Shanghai Composite declined 12.69 points or 0.60% to 2,115.10, Hang Seng dipped 102.86 points or 0.45% to 22,785.89, Jakarta Composite contracted 44.22 points or 1.04% to 4,187.76, KLSE Composite shed 5.28 points or 0.29% to 1,840.90 and Nikkei 225 was down by 65.44 points or 0.41% to 15,793.78.

On the flip side, Straits Times rose 7.63 points or 0.25% to 3,077.86, Seoul Composite added 3.31 points or 0.17% to 1,978.96 and Taiwan Weighted was up by 24.33 points or 0.29% to 8,431.73.