Benchmarks equity indices are trading in a narrow range with positive bias in late morning due to buying in healthcare, IT and tech counters. Investor’s sentiments remained upbeat on report that the foreign institutional investors bought shares worth Rs 292.23 crore on Tuesday as per the provisional data from the National Stock Exchange. On the global front, most of Asian equity indices were trading in red with investors treading cautiously, following a mixed close on Wall Street overnight on the back of some disappointing economic data. The Japanese stock market is trading weak with investors indulging in some profit taking after the previous session's sharp upmove following the central bank's decision to extend special loan facilities by a year and to double the size of funds available to banks.
Back home, traders were buying, Healthcare, IT and Teck stocks, while selling was seen in Metal, Realty and Power. The market breadth on BSE remains positive with advances to declines in the ratio of 1117:659. BSE Sensex and NSE Nifty were comfortably trading near their psychological 20,600 and 6,100 levels respectively.
The BSE Sensex is currently trading at 20672.50 up by 141.81 points or 0.69% after trading in a range of 20613.79 and 20436.48. There were 19 stocks advancing against 11 declines on the index. The broader indices were trading green; the BSE Mid cap index was up by 0.54% and Small cap index gained 0.70%.
The top gaining sectoral indices on the BSE were, Healthcare up by 0.98%, IT up by 0.66%, Teck up by 0.65%, Capital Goods up by 0.43% and Consumer Durables up by 0.38%, while Metal down by 0.74%, Realty down by 0.13% and Power down by 0.11% were the top losers on the sectoral index.
The top gainers on the Sensex were Sun Pharma up by 1.71%, Infosys up by 1.22%, BHEL up by 1.20%, Bharti Airtel up by 0.99%, and Gail India up by 0.90%. On the flip side, SSLT was down by 1.32%, Tata Steel was down by 1.06%, HDFC was down by 1.03%, Tata Power was down by 0.76% and Tata Motors was down by 0.70% were the top losers on the Sensex.
Meanwhile, non-performing assets (NPAs), one of the major problematic areas of the Indian banking sector are continuously rising and it is estimated that currently upto a quarter of bank loans are under stress. Finance Minister P Chidmabram in his interim budget just acknowledged that banks are under strain owing to rising non-performing assets and that bankers have assured that as the economy turns they will be able to contain the NPAs, recover more loans, and build healthier balance sheets, However, he failed to offer any relief and merely announced that he will recapitalise banks to the extent of Rs 11,200 crore, which was again lower than last fiscal.
A study done by NPAsource.com, a first-of-its-kind portal which focuses on resolution of stressed assets and an online portal for e-auction of NPAs of financial institutions, has said that gross non-performing assets (NPAs) of 40 listed banks shot up 35.2 per cent or Rs 63,386 crore in the nine months ended December 31, 2013. The study further elaborated that 10 out of the 40 listed banks accounted for nearly 70 per cent of the total gross NPAs. State Bank of India at 28 per cent at Rs 67,799 crore has the largest share in total gross NPAs of the 40 listed banks, followed by Punjab National Bank with 7 per cent share at Rs 16,596 crore and Bank of Baroda and Central Bank of India with 5 per cent share each at Rs 11926 crore and Rs 11599 crore respectively. On the other hand Yes Bank, DCB and City Union Bank were having the lowest gross NPAs at Rs 196 crore, Rs 208 crore and Rs 269 crore respectively.
Recently, Reserve Bank of India Governor Raghuram Rajan too in the foreword of the Financial Stability Report has said that non-performing assets of the banking sector need to be tackled on a priority basis to ensure that they do not grow to alarming proportions. Further, despite assuring that the current levels of NPAs do not pose a systemic concern, has said that we cannot be complacent.
The CNX Nifty is currently trading at 6,112.80 up by 39.50 points or 0.65% after trading in a range of 6,120.05 and 6,066.80. There were 40 stocks advancing against 10 decliners on the index.
The top gainers of the Nifty were Ranbaxy up by 4.13%, Sun Pharma up by 1.63%, Infosys up by 1.24%, Ultra Cement up by 1.19% and BHEL up by 1.75%. On the flip side, Jindal Steel down by 2.61%, Tata Steel down by 1.41%, Tata Power down by 1.20%, HDFC down by 1.11%, and Kotak Bank down by 1.07% were the top losers on the index.
Most of the Asian equity indices were trading in red; Hang Seng dropped 16.85 points or 0.07% to 22,570.87, KLSE Composite slipped by 1.83 points or 0.10% to 1,823.41, Nikkei 225 crumbled 96.43 points or 0.65% to 14,746.81, Seoul Composite decreased 9.18 points or 0.47% to 1,937.73 and Taiwan Weighted was down by 2.10 points or 0.02% to 8,554.13.
On the flip side, Shanghai Composite was up by 12.13 points or 0.57% to 2,131.20, Jakarta Composite rose 12.78 points or 0.28% to 4,568.98 and Straits Times was up by 15.83 points or 0.52% to 3,086.61.
