Benchmarks gyrate around their neutral line in late morning

Benchmarks continued to trade near the neural line with negative bias in late morning on emergence of profit booking by funds as well as retail investors amid a mixed trend in the Asian region influenced the trading sentiment here. Sentiments also got dampened as the rupee was lower tracking Asian forex weakness, with the pair at 62.01/02 versus Wednesday's close of 61.8150/8250. Interest rate sensitive stocks fell on caution ahead of RBI's policy review on Tuesday. However ,markets managed to pare some of their initial losses as some support came in with finance minister P Chidambaram’s assurance to global investors that India is prepared to face the impact of the US Fed tapering and the country is poised to clock 5% growth in 2013-14 and over 6% in 2014-15. Sentiments also remained up-beat with a Moody’s Analytics report that the Indian economy has started to turn the corner and the worst may be over for the Indian economy. It further said that a Narendra Modi-led BJP government, if elected, should offer a more business-friendly policy that will further support confidence and investment.

On the global front, Asian markets too were trading mostly lower at this point of time after activity in China’s factory sector contracted in January for the first time in six months, pointing to a weak start for the economy in 2014 as policymakers seek to curb high debt levels to head off financial risks.

Back home, traders were buying, Capital Goods, Healthcare and Consumer Durables while, selling was seen in IT, TECK and Metal on the BSE. The market breadth on BSE remains positive with advances to declines in the ratio of 1000:827. BSE Sensex and NSE Nifty were comfortably trading near their psychological 21,300 and 6,300 levels respectively. The BSE Sensex is currently trading at 21326.67 down by 11.00 points or 0.05% after trading in a range of 21355.34 and 21264.71. There were 15 stocks advancing against 15 declines on the index. The broader indices were trading in green; the BSE Mid cap index was down by 0.19% and Small cap index lost 0.23%.

The top gaining sectoral indices on the BSE were, Capital Goods up by 2.32%, Healthcare up by 0.55%, Consumer Durables up by 0.27% and Power up by 0.22%, while IT down by 0.75%, TECK down by 0.63%, Metal down by 0.56%, Auto down by 0.44% and Oil & Gas down by 0.40% were the top losers on the sectoral index.

The top gainers on the Sensex were L&T up by 3.30%, Sun Pharma up by 1.93%, Bharti Airtel up by 1.11%, BHEL up by 0.97% and Tata Power up by 0.85%. On the flip side, Mahindra & Mahindra was down by 2.16%, Wipro was down by 1.64%, Bajaj Auto was down by 1.61%, ONGC was down by 1.48% and  Hindalco Inds was down by 1.04% were the top losers on the Sensex.

Meanwhile, Allaying concerns of global investors over the impact of calibrated tapering of bond purchases by the US Federal Reserve, Finance Minister P Chidambaram has asserted that India is better prepared to face the impact of US Fed tapering and the country is poised to clock 5 percent economic growth in FY14 and over 6 percent in the next financial year. In the previous fiscal, India's economic slowed to a decade low of 5 percent was on account of the global slowdown along with domestic factors such as high inflation and interest rates.

The Federal Reserve has announced trimming of its $85 billion monthly stimulus programme as the US economic indicators have started improving. It is expected that US Fed tapering would impact the growth of emerging economies including India through squeezing global fund allocations to these nations.

By adding further, Chidambaram highlighted that the government has been taking various measures in order to strengthen the country’s fiscal position and to bring the stability in domestic currency and capital markets. The government has set the target to contain the country’s fiscal deficit at 4.8% of GDP in current fiscal. 

The CNX Nifty is currently trading at 6,329.65 down by 9.30 points or 0.15% after trading in a range of 6,342.90 and 6,316.40. There were 20 stocks advancing against 30 stock declines on the index.

The top gainers of the Nifty were L&T up by 3.28%, Sun Pharmaceuticals up by 2.00%, Cairn up by 1.23%, Bharti Airtel up by 1.11% and Tata Power up by 1.11%. On the flip side, HCL Tech down by 2.55%, M&M down by 2.19%, Wipro down by 1.81%, Bajaj-Auto down by 1.67% and ONGC down by 1.57% were the top losers on the index.

Most of the Asian equity indices were trading in red; Shanghai Composite slipped 10.48 points or 0.51% to 2,041.27, Hang Seng declined 315.98 points or 1.37% to 22,766.27, KLSE Composite shed 3.44 points or 0.19% to 1,810.66, Nikkei 225 dipped 96.11 points or 0.61% to 15,724.86, Straits Times decreased 19.41 points or 0.62% to 3,114.33, Seoul Composite contracted 19.56 points or 0.99% to 1,950.86 and Taiwan Weighted was down by 22.01 points or 0.26% to 8,603.29. On the flip side, Jakarta Composite was up by 10.94 points or 0.24% to 4,488.43.