Benchmarks make positive start for fourth straight session; Nifty surpasses 6,450 level

After scaling all-time closing highs in previous session, Indian equity benchmarks have opened on a firm note tracking positive global cues, surpassing their crucial 6,450 (Nifty) 21,650 (Sensex) bastions. Investors now hope that the pre-election rally fuelled by foreign funds along with an increased participation from retail investors will drive markets higher in the near-term. Some support also came in with an HSBC survey saying that India’s manufacturing and services sectors expanded at a faster rate than China in February even as emerging market economies grew at the slowest pace since September 2013.

Global cues too remained supportive with most of the Asian markets were trading in the green terrain at this point of time, heading for their longest stretch of weekly gains since September. Though, the US markets remained in consolidation mood and once again made a mixed closing ahead of the Friday’s monthly jobs report. However, there was good news from the economic front as the initial jobless claims dropped to 323,000, from the previous week’s revised figure of 349,000.

Back home, sentiments also remained up-beat after Indian rupee hit a new three-month high in early trade today, but failed to rise above 61. It was trading around 61.11/12 after opening at 61.01. A large US bank is buyer of dollar in early trades. On the sectoral front technology, capital goods, banking and realty witnessed the maximum gain in trade, while software, technology and healthcare remained the top losers on the BSE sectoral space. The broader indices too were trading in the green terrain, while the market breadth on the BSE was positive; there were 1,034 shares on the gaining side against 605 shares on the losing side while 79 shares remain unchanged.

The BSE Sensex opened at 21539.44; about 25 points higher compared to its previous closing of 21513.87, and touched a high and a low of 21710.43 and 21539.44 respectively. The index is currently trading at 21695.15, up by 181.28 points or 0.84%. There were 23 stocks advancing against 7 declines on the index.

The overall market breadth has made a strong start with 60.22% stocks advancing against 35.33% declines. The broader indices too were trading in green; the BSE Mid cap index up was by 0.26% and Small cap gained 0.29%. 

The top gaining sectoral indices on the BSE were, Capital Goods up by 4.37%, Bankex up by 2.47%, Realty up by 1.26%, Metal up by 1.18% and Power up by 1.16%, while IT down by 1.91%, Teck down by 1.20% and Healthcare down by 0.47% were the top losers on the sectoral index.

The top gainers on the Sensex were L&T up by 5.97%, Bharti Airtel up by 3.90%, ICICI Bank up by 3.62%, SBI up by 3.34% and BHEL up by 2.58%. On the flip side, TCS was down by 3.13%, Wipro was down by 2.66%, Dr Reddys Lab was down by 1.41%, Infosys was down by 0.97% and ONGC was down by 0.65% were the top losers on the Sensex.

Meanwhile, as per the Federation of Indian Exports Organisation (FIEO), India’s exports will fall short by about $10 billion from its set target of $325 billion for the current fiscal. During April-January’FY14, value of exports increased by 5.71% to $257.09 billion as against $243.19 billion in the same period of previous fiscal year. For the remaining two months of current fiscal, the country requires about $68 billion to reach the set target, which seems difficult.

FIEO President Rafeeq Ahmed has stated that factors like declining manufacturing growth and slow recovery in global demand are adversely impacting the country’s exports. Highlighting liquidity as a big issue for exports, Ahmed stated that pending claims of refund of service tax, duty drawback, rebate claims and VAT are impacting the domestic firms’ exports. Banks should provide credit at affordable rates to exporters. Turning to sluggish country’s infrastructure, the FIEO President asserted that inadequate infrastructure has also been affecting overseas shipments as the transactions costs is very high.

Further, Ahmed added that the government should fix targets for five years instead of annual targets for exports and work according. FIEO is presently preparing a draft for the new Foreign Trade Policy for 2014-19 including measures to boost exports, which will be submitted to the new government in the next two and a half months time.

The CNX Nifty opened at 6,413.95; about 12 point higher as compared to its previous closing of 6,401.15, and has touched a high and a low of 6,459.25 and 6,413.55 respectively. The index is currently trading at 6,451.35, up by 50.20 points or 0.78%. There were 35 stocks advancing against 12 declines and two stocks remain unchanged on the index.

The top gainers of the Nifty were L&T up by 5.91%, Bharti Airtel up by 3.67%, ICICI Bank up by 3.65%, JP Associate up by 3.56% and IndusInd Bank up by 3.15%. On the flip side, TCS down by 3.21%, Wipro down by 2.60%, HCL Tech down by 1.53%, Dr. Reddy's Laboratories down by 1.42% and Infosys down by 0.90% were the top losers on the index.

Most of the Asian equity indices were trading in green; Shanghai Composite rose 0.33 points or 0.02% to 2,059.91, Jakarta Composite gained by 11.89 points or 0.25% to 4,699.74, Nikkei 225 spurted by 52.99 points or 0.35% to 15,187.74, Straits Times soared 3.20 points or 0.10% to 3,132.37, KOSPI Composite increased 0.28 points or 0.01% to 1,975.90 and Taiwan Weighted was up by 25.17 points or 0.29% to 8,738.96.

On the flip side, Hang Seng dropped 54.97 points or 0.24% to 22,648.00 and KLSE Composite was down by 5.60 points or 0.30% to 1,833.09.