The Indian equity markets ended the day in the green after a volatile session since its opening. The Sensex closed at 17,440.87, 0.32 percent up and Nifty ended above 5250 despite muted global cues. The positive closing is perhaps because of the outperformance of Indian equity markets against global peers.
According to a report by Morgan Stanley India outperformed both emerging and Asian markets in the month of August, rebuffing earlier fears of underperformance. “India was the eighth best-performing emerging market in the month of August, up from 16th in the previous month,” it said in a note.
However, concerns loom large of a possible downgrade of India’s sovereign debt rating if the expected reforms do not come through in the next few days. Even the Kelkar Panel, which has been set up by the government to chart a roadmap to fiscal consolidation, has stressed that cutting fuel subsidy is key to any fiscal reform. Globally,investors are on a ‘wait-and-watch’ mode ahead of crucial policy meetings in Europe and the US in the next few days.
With lack of policy reforms in the current Parliament session, combined with the cautious undertone of globe ahead outcome of ECB policy meeting on Thursday, there are no incentives for investors to pump in money into risk asset class, until the speculation that the government will kick-start the reform process.
All the sectoral indices closed in the green, barring Pharma and IT which ended absolutely flat. Leading the list of gainers was Realty, up 1.6% followed by Oil&Gas, Power, Consumer Durables and Metals.
GAIL, Jindal Steel, JP Associates, RIL, Tata Motors, Power Grid Corp, BPCL, RInfra, SBI and Tata Steel were the top gainers on the Sensex and the Nifty.
IDFC, HDFC, Cipla, Tata Power and Bajaj Auto were the top laggards on both the indices.
The Bank Index including key stocks like SBI and ICICI Bank were up on hopes of government capital infusion. Metals stocks such as JSPL and Sesa Goa also ended the day in green.
Reuters
Among the frontline stocks, RIL and BPCL posted gains of over 2 percent. The Oil and Gas stocks gained the most among sectoral indices on hopes of fuel price hike.
Stocks in News
Kingfisher Airlines was up almost 5 percent after promoter Vijay Mallya gave a Rs 5,904 crore guarantee to the airline’s lenders ahead of the meet tomorrow.
Tech Mahindra is up 1.28 percent after reports that the company acquired Hutch’s BPO arm.
ONGC lost half a percent after CAG hauled up the company for hiring RIL for deepsea drilling without competitive bidding.
United Spirits was up 3 percent after reports that the company will sell 49 percent stake in Whyte and Mackay.
