Benchmarks hold early gains; Oil & Gas, CG, Realty lead

Indian equities continued to trade in fine fettle on back of strong buying in frontline counters in the late morning session. Asian markets were trading in green with some of the indices surging by over a percent after there was positive news on the Greece bailout. Back home, traders were seen piling up position in Oil & Gas, CG and Realty sector. Meanwhile, telecom stocks like Idea Cellular, Bharti Airtel, Reliance Communication and MTNL were trading in green after fixing the minimum price at Rs 14,000 crore for 5 units of GSM airwaves in the 1800 MHz, the panel of ministers on spectrum, headed by finance minister P Chidambaram, will meet today to consider a revised timeline for the spectrum auctions, as the government may not be able to meet the deadline for completing the sale process by this month-end. In the scrip specific development, Divis Laboratories was trading in green, on reporting a rise of 63.15% in its net profit at Rs 167.38 crore for the quarter under review as compared to Rs 102.59 crore for the same quarter in the previous year. Glenmark Generics was up by 3% on securing final USFDA approval for Montelukast Sodium tablets. The NSE Nifty and BSE Sensex were managing to hold their psychological 5250 and 17400 levels respectively. The market breadth on BSE was positive in the ratio of 1564:530 while 77 scrips remained unchanged.

The BSE Sensex is currently trading at 17426.95 up by 229.02 points or 1.33% after touching a high of 17448.42 and a low of 17313.05. There were 26 stocks advancing against 4 declines on the index.

The broader indices were trading on a positive note; the BSE Mid cap index was up 1.08%, while Small cap index was up 1.38%.

On the BSE sectoral space, Oil & Gas up by 2.64%, CG up by 1.67%, Realty up by 1.64%, Bankex up by 1.56% and Metal up by 1.51% were the gainers while there was no loser on the index.

RIL up by 4.41%, Tata Motors up by 2.97%, Tata Steel up by 2.48%, L&T up by 2.16% and Sterlite Industries up by 1.86% were the gainers on the Sensex, while Coal India down by 0.41%, TCS down by 0.36%, Dr Reddys Lab down by 0.12% and Hindustan Unilever down by 0.11% were the major losers on the index.

 Meanwhile, SEBI, the market regulator has banned 19 entities from the securities market due to downward movement in some mid-cap stocks. It has prohibited them from accessing the securities market and barred them from buying, selling and dealing in securities until further order. The major stocks include, Parsvnath Developers, Pipavav Defence and Offshore Engineering, Tulip Telecom and Glodyne Technoserve which showed 20% -26% downward trend. This downward movement was seen in both BSE and NSE and there were no price sensitive disclosures to the stock exchanges during 15 days prior to the fall on July 26.

The other entities are 4a Financials Securities, A to Z Steels, Ajit Kumar Jain, Cheminare Trade Comm, G N Credits, Gajria Jayna Precision Industries, Kuvam Plast, Littlestar Vanijya, Manish Agarwal, Milestone Shares & Stock Broking., Neelanchal Mercantile, North Eastern Publishing & Advertising Co, Passions System Solution, Premium Hospitality Services, Ramkripa Securities, Umang Nemani, Venus Infosoft, White Horse Trading Co and Yashika Holding.

These entities were under observation for the past six months. Investigation also exposed several doubtful features in transactions. SEBI will conduct a detailed investigation to find out if all the disclosures made by the companies are proper and hopes to complete the inquiry soon.

The market regulator analyzed the activity of major clients on the basis of net sell at NSE and BSE on July 26, 2012 (during the price fall period) in aforesaid scrips and observed that some of these clients were not only common across the above scrips but they also traded on both the exchanges, violating section 12A of the Securities and Exchange Board of India Act, 1992.

 The S&P CNX Nifty is currently trading at 5,285.75, up by 70.05 points or 1.34% after trading in a range of 5,291.35 and 5,260.85. There were 45 stocks advancing against 5 declines on the index.

The top gainers on the Nifty were Reliance up by 4.62%, JP Associates up by 3.14%, Tata Motors up by 3.10%, Reliance Infra by 2.88% and Sail up by 2.78%. While, BPCL down by 0.85%, Asian Paints down by 0.70%, TCS down by 0.28%, DR Reddy down by 0.27% and Coal India down by 0.16% were the major losers on the index.

All the Asian indices were trading in green; Kospi Composite Index up 1.98%, Jakarta Composite up by 0.59%, Hang Seng index up by 2.06%, Straits Times up by 1.04%, KLSE Composite up by 0.23%, Taiwan Weighted up by 0.85% , Nikkei 225 up 2.28%, Shanghai Composite  was up by 0.63%.