Markets close in green, Tata Motors up 4.2 % on higher car sales

3:30 Markets have closed in positive territory led by a surge in rate sensitive segments like auto (1.29 percent) , Banks (1.27 percent) and capital goods (1 percent). The Sensex closed up 77 points to 17171 while the Nifty closed up 18.75 points to 5226, according to provisional data. Among NSE scrips, 855 stocks had advanced, 627 declined while 69 remained the same.

The markets did not react to the March inflation figures which came in slightly higher than expected at 6.89 percent against Reuters expecations of 6.7 percent.

Banking stocks moved up ahead of the RBI monetary policy meet on 17 April on hopes that the RBI may cut key policy interest rates. While SBI gained 2.7 percent, ICICI Bank was up 1.14 percent while Axis Bank was up 3.23 percent.

Tata Motors hit a 52 week high as the stock closed up 4.25 percent to Rs 301.4 per share

The Tata Motors Group global wholesales, including Jaguar Land Rover, were 1,39,655 in March 2012, higher by 26% over March 2011. Infosys closed lower at Rs 2369, down 1.37 percent after a slew of downgrades.

Hexaware closed up 5.3 percent after it made a pact with Indroyal Group for supply of software services. HDIL was up after UBS upgraded the stock to Rs 95 per share. It closed higher by 5 percent to Rs 86.85 per share.

Parsvnath Developers gained 7.23 percent after reports emerged that it is planning to sell its land bank. However, in a press release to BSE, the company has given an exclusive mandate to Jones Lang LaSalle India (JLL) to handle the process and the matter is under progress. According to media source, ICICI, Bharti and Sahara are in race to buy the Delhi plot.

Sensex near intraday high but euro fears lurk

3:00 Market breath seems to have turned positive as it is trading near its day’s high. Sensex is up 50 points to 17144 while the Nifty is up 16 points to 5224.

Among 30-Sensex scrips, Tata Motors is the lead gainer as the stock is up almost 4 percent to Rs 301 per share, a one year high. ITC and SBI are also up by 1.78 percent and 2 percent each. However, Bharti Airtel and Infosys are some of the biggest losers as they have fallen by more than 1.5 percent each.

Hexaware gains 4 percent in pact with Hexaware Technologies is in pact with Indroyal Group for supply of software services, reports CNBC-TV18.

Markets trade flat ahead of monetary policy, Tata Motors hits 52 week high

2:00 Markets continue to sway ahead of the RBI monetary policy on 17 April. While the Sensex has come off its intra day high and is now trading in the red with a 28 points fall to 17066, the Nifty is down 6 points to 5201.

Nifty has strong support at 5315-5150 told Hemant Thukral, national head-derivative desk at Aditya Birla Money to CNBC TV 18. “I don’t see the Nifty breaking next 50 points very easily because banks still hold positive,” he added. Thukral expects Nifty to hold 5,150 in the coming few trading sessions.

Among NSE, 742 stocks have advanced, 699 have declined while 72 are at the same level.

Infosys continues to slide admist under performance ratings by brokerages. The stock is down 2.67 percent.

Tata Motors’s stock hit a 52 week high to Rs 297.9 per share after it reported better than expected global passsenger vehicle sales numbers.

The Tata Motors Group global wholesales, including Jaguar Land Rover, were 1,39,655 nos., in March 2012, higher by 26% over March 2011. Cumulative sales for the fiscal are 1,252,173, higher by 16% compared to the corresponding period in 2010-11.

Other scrips that hit a 52 week high includes the ITC, Hexaware and TTK Prestige.

ABB is down marginally by 0.17 percent. It informed in a release to BSE that it plans to invest Rs 250 crore to expand power projects manufacturing base in India.

Markets cautious as experts bet on rate cut; SBI gains 2%

1:00 European markets have opened in the red with banks and drug stocks under pressure. This has not made any major impact on the domestic markets as they are up marginally.

The Markets also seem to have factored in the slightly higher than expected inflation data and are now expecting a 25 basis cut in key policy rates tomorrow.

All eyes have now turned towards 17 April, the day the RBI will announce its Monetary policy as March inflation came in at 6.89 percent against Reuters expectations of 6.7 percent.

The Sensex, the barometer of the Indian economy is up 20 points to 17120 while the Nifty is up 10 points to 5217.

Among the 30-Sensex scrips, 17 are in the green while 13 have declined. Top gainers in the Sensex include Maruti Suzuki (1.5 percent), ITC (1.3 percent), BHEL (1.2 percent) while the losers include Infosys (-1 percent), Hindalco (-0.9 percent), NTPC (-0.9 percent).

Steve Brice, Chief Investment Strategist, Standard Chartered Bank expects 25 bps cut in repo rate in the RBI policy meeting tomorrow.

Essel group has said that it has no intent to increase stake in IVRCL. IVRCL is down 3 percent to Rs 69.6 per share. The Essel group has a 12.27 percent stake in the company.

eClerx has also moved up by 3 percent after the company said it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire 100% of Agilyst Inc, a US based Knowledge Process Outsourcing firm, through its overseas subsidiary, eClerx Investments

Parsvnath Developers is up almost 7 percent after it news emerged that it is planning to sell land worth Rs 700 crore.

HDIL is up 3 percent after UBS upgraded the stock to Rs 95 per share against its current price of Rs 85.25 per share. Increased cash ability was one of the reasons cited in the report.

Among other scrips, Edelweiss, Aurobondo Pharma and Motilal Oswal are up more than seven percent each.

HSBC Global Research is underweight on Godrej Properties with a target price of Rs 490 per share. The stock is currently trading at Rs 613 per share.

March inflation at 6.89 percent, markets undettered

12:00 Alstom projects has gained 3 percent to Rs 370.9 per share after it informed BSE that it has been awarded with a contract worth approximately Euro 18 million (approx Rs. 115 crores) by the Uttarakhand Jal Vidyut Nigam Ltd. (UJVNL).

Among sectoral indices, 10 out of the 13 indices are in the green with the Realty (1.3 percent) and the Bankex (0.85 percent) taking the lead. SBI gained 1.9 percent Axis Bank (1.65 percent), ICICI Bank (0.63 percent).

Stock markets have moved up marginally as the Sensex is up 14.5 points to 17109 while the Nifty is up 5 points to 5212 as the street is expecting a 25 basis point cut in key policy rates.

March inflation at 6.89 percent against Reuters expectations of 6.7 percent. The stock markets haven’t yet reacted to this news as the Sensex is down 17 points to 17076 while the Nifty is down 2 points to 5205.

Nifty could fall below 5000 on global cues, inflation data eyed

11:00 am Markets continues to trade flat with the Sensex at 17081, down 12.6 points while the Nifty is at 5205, down 1.8 points. The next immediate trigger could be the whole sale price inflation data for March that is expected to at 11:30 am.

As per Richard Jerram, chief economist of Bank of Singapore, the inflation number is expected to come in at about 6.7%.

According to a reuters survey, WPI is expected to come in at 6.70 percent from a year ago, under the 6.95 percent recorded in February.

Infosys continues to trade lower by 1.4 percent to Rs 2386 per share. The stock has been hammered by a slew of downgrades. CLSA has downgraded the stock to underperform from overweight. However, Kotak Securities has an accumulate rating on the stock with a price of Rs 2599 per share.

The IT Index continues to be one of the biggest losers. The CNX-IT index witnessed a very strong breakdown on Friday post Infosys disappointing Q4 earnings. According to Anu Jain, senior vice president, IIFL Private Wealth Management, another 3-4% downfall from the current levels for the CNX-IT index is possible.

10:30 am 10:30 Tracking weak global markets, Sensex continues to trade lower by 28 points to 17068 while the Nifty is down by 8 points to 5199.

Over the last week, global equities have buckled under the pressure of weak economic cues. With problems re-emerging in the eurozone, the US economy still under pressure and Chinese GDP at a 3-year low, Sandeep Shah of Sampriti Capital believes a sell off below the 5000 level is possible.

However, a 50 basis point suprise from the RBI and some positive developments with the Finance Bill can take us to 5400 on the upside, he added.

Among the 30-Sensex scrips, 11 are in green while 19 have declined. Top gainers include the scips of SBI (1.9 percent), DLF (1.47 percent), Cipla (0.91 percent) while the losers include M&M (-1.4 percent), Sterlite Inds (-1.4 percent), Hindalco (-0.9 percent).

Piramal Healthcare is up 1.4 percent to Rs 456 per share. The company informed BSE that it has agreed to buy a research and development portfolio from Bayer AG, in a deal that gives Piramal rights to florbetaben, a possible Alzheimer treatment.

Mcnally Bharat Engineering is up 2 percent to Rs 99.5 per share after the company informed BSE that it is in recept oforder at a price of Rs 298 crores.

Market cautious ahead of policy meet, rate sensitive gain on repo cut hopes

9:30 am The BSE Sensex plunged 134 points points or 0.79 percent in the early trade on Monday at 16,959.55with all eyes on the monthly inflation data and RBI’s monetary policy announcements tomorrow, where there is a widely expected rate cuts hope this time. The Nifty fell 14 points or 0.28 percent at 5,193.05.

“It would be wise to not trade on a day when newsflow is heavy, Sudarshan Sukhani of S2analytics.com told CNBC-TV18 today . “Today will be a mildly volatile, but tomorrow will be very volatile,” he added. He said one should take short positions and wait patiently.

Rate sensitive sectors of real estate and banking have done well so far amid hope of a repo rate cut tomorrow. Oil & Gas is the weak link for the market so far due to weakness in index bellwether Reliance Industries.

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There will be some cheers for the aviation stocks as after three rounds of price hike, state-owned oil companies have announced a marginal reduction in jet fuel prices by about Rs 170 per kilolitre. Also, companies such as Castrol India, CRISIL, Jay Bharat Maruti and Mindtree etc will be announcing their numbers today and will keep the markets buzzing. Mindtree is expected to post flat dollar revenues due to lack of one-time transition revenues in the third quarter. Margins are also expected to be flat.The stock is up 1.20 percent at Rs 501.75.

Bank stocks are trading higher ahead of RBI monetary policy for FY13 on April 17. SBI and Axis Bank rose nearly 1 percent.

Hotel Leela tumbled over 4 percent after The Economic Times reported that lenders including IOB, Syndicate Bank and BOI backed out of Hotel Leela Rs 3000 crore CDR .

Reliance Power has received $80-mn export financing nod from US Exim Bank. Reports stated that the project - Rajasthan Sun Technique Energy Private Ltd - is a subsidiary of Reliance Power and is being co-financed by the Asian Development Bank and FMO. The stock is up 1 percent at Rs 115.70.

Coal India board will meet today to consider the model agreement with power producers for assured supply of fuel in the wake of presidential directive for signing fuel supply pacts. The stock is down almost 1 percent at Rs 335.25 asHedge fund The Children’s Investment Fund said it would initiate legal action against state-run Coal India within a week for failing to protect the interests of minority shareholders.

Piramal Healthcare is up 2.52 percent after the company acquired molecular imaging development portfolio of Bayer Pharma.

Siemens India may partner with energy-led conglomerate Reliance Industries Ltd for future security solution projects on a case-by-case basis. However, Siemens is down half a percent while RIL is down 1.5 percent in early trade.

Reliance Industrial Infrastructure rose 0.73 percent at Rs 441.90 on BSE after net profit rose 5.50 percent to Rs. 23.61 crore on 9.50 percent rise in net sales to Rs. 61.34 crore in the year ended March 2012 over the year ended March 2011.

The rupee fell in opening trade on Monday as a surge in Spanish yields reignited worries over Europe’s debt crisis, hurting risk appetite and clouding the outlook for capital flows into emerging markets. At 9:01 a.m, the rupee was at 51.62/63 to the dollar, weaker than Friday’s close of 51.305.

Stocks InNews

The Economic Times reported that State-run NALCO is looking to set up a new aluminium smelting facility of 500,000 tonnes and 1,250 MW captive power plant in Odisha’s Sundargarh district with an investment of Rs 18000 crore.

The bunker of the 6th unit of the NTPC thermal power plant at Kahalgaon in Bhagalpur district collapsed, halting power generation from the unit with 500 MW capacity, an official told the Economic Times.

HSBC is not likely to buy the retail and commercial banking businesses of Royal Bank of Scotland in India unless it gets the majority of its branches here, the Business Standard reported.

Ranbaxy Laboratories will launch this month the country’s first indigenously developed new medicine, a malaria drug, at one-third the cost of the current therapies, reports the Economic Times.

Maruti Suzuki said it plans to invest Rs 2000 crore in diesel engine manufacturing facility at its Gurgaon plant to meet the demand for Swift and Desire models, reports the Economic Times.

Bharti Airtel, the country’s top mobile phone company, is in advanced talks with Chinese OEMs to bring ‘mifi’ devices that will help people in India to access fourth generation services from their 3G smart-phones.

At 7: 46 am, Asian markets were trading lower. China’s Shanghai Composite slipped 0.27 per cent or 6.46 points at 2,352.71.

Hong Kong’s Hang Seng was down 0.71 per cent or 147.59 points at 20,553.45.

Japan’s Nikkei shed 1.31 per cent or 126.03 points at 9,511.96.

Singapore’s Straits Times was down 0.20 per cent or 5.90 points at 2,981.92.

South Korea’s Seoul Composite shed 0.86 per cent or 17.35 points at 1,991.56.

Taiwan’s Taiwan Weighted fell 0.54 per cent or 42.15 points at 7,746.12.