Benchmarks continue firm trade in late morning

After making positive opening, Indian equity benchmarks continued to trade firm in late morning  following positive global cues. Sentiments remained jubilant since early morning as investors breathed easy with easing Ukraine concerns over the situation in Crimea even as the region voted in favor of quitting Ukraine. Sentiments also got some support on report that foreign institutional investors (FIIs) bought shares worth a net Rs 982.19 crore on Friday, as per provisional data from the stock exchanges. Further, rupee appreciation against the US dollar too aided the sentiments. On the global front, the Asian markets too were trading mostly in the green terrain tailing the gains in the US markets and some of the indices are up by about a percent rebounding from a five-week low.

Back home, traders were buying, Power, Oil & Gas and Auto stocks, while selling was seen in IT. Banking stock edged higher after the Wholesale Price Index (WPI) based inflation moderated for the third straight month and is likely to increase the clamour for the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) to cut interest rates in its next monetary policy.

The market breadth on BSE remains positive with advances to declines in the ratio of 1323:683. BSE Sensex and NSE Nifty were comfortably trading near their psychological 21,600 and 6,400 levels respectively. The BSE Sensex is currently trading at 21985.23 up by 175.43 points or 0.80% after trading in a range of 22040.72 and 21849.65. There were 23 stocks advancing against 7 declines on the index. The broader indices were trading in green; the BSE Mid cap index was up by 1.09% and Small cap index up by 0.87%.

The top gaining sectoral indices on the BSE were, Power up by 1.76%, Oil & Gas up by 1.50%, Auto up by 1.49%, PSU up by 1.47% and Bankex up by 1.41%, while IT down by 0.10% was only the loser on the sectoral space.

The top gainers on the Sensex were Maruti Suzuki up by 7.68%, SBI up by 2.39%, Coal India up by 2.29%, Tata Power up by 2.22% and BHEL up by 2.11%. On the flip side, L&T was down by 0.78%, Infosys was down by 0.39%, HDFC was down by 0.33%, Hindustan Unilever was down by 0.14% and TCS was down by 0.11% were the top losers on the Sensex.

Meanwhile, the government has hiked the import tariff value of gold to $445 per 10 grams from $433, in line with global rates of the precious metals. Tariff value or the base price is set to determine the customs duty on the precious metals and to prevent under invoicing. However, the import tariff value of silver has been reduced to $694 per kg from $699 per kg earlier.

Gold is the second largest import item for India after crude oil. The government had taken various measures like high customs duty of 10% and 80/20 rule to curb gold shipments to check country’s widening current account deficit (CAD). Meanwhile, the government’s measures to contain the gold imports have started yielding results as imports of gold and silver declined by 70% to $1.6 billion during first eleven months of current fiscal from a year earlier. India’s gold import is likely to come down to around 550 tonnes in FY13 from 845 tonnes in FY13 due to these restrictions.

Shrinking gold imports also helped to contain the current account deficit (CAD) to $31.1 billion (2.3% of GDP) during the April-December’FY14 as compared to $69.8 billion (5.2% of GDP) reported in the same period of previous fiscal year.

The CNX Nifty is currently trading at 6,558.00 up by 53.80 points or 0.83% after trading in a range of 6,574.95 and 6,531.90. There were 42 stocks advancing against 6 declines while 2 stocks remains unchanged on the index.

The top gainers of the Nifty were Maruti Suzuki up by 7.72%, IndusInd Bank up by 2.69%, SBIN up by 2.41%, Ambuja Cement up by 2.26% and Jindal Steel & Power up by 2.23%. On the flip side, L&T down by 0.71%, Infosys down by 0.52%, HDFC down by 0.33%, Lupin down by 0.19% and HUL down by 0.05% were the top losers on the index.

most of the Asian equity indices were trading in green; Shanghai Composite strengthened by 5.99 points or 0.30% to 2,029.66, Hang Seng added 98.87 points or 0.46% to 21,572.82, KLSE Composite climbed 1.82 points or 0.10% to 1,817.32, Nikkei 225 spurted by 225.32 points or 1.58% to 14,503.93, Straits Times was up by 0.11 points to 3,092.63, KOSPI Composite soared 18.21 points or 0.95% to 1,946.05 and Taiwan Weighted was up by 40.77 points or .47% to 8,741.68. On the flip side, Jakarta Composite was down by 44.48 points or 0.91% to 4,831.71.