Thursday turned out to be a
fabulous day of trade for Indian equity markets, where frontline gauges
garnered a gain of over half a percent as US Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen
made the well-anticipated move of increased rates by 25 bps in its effort to
return monetary policy to a more normal footing. After making a gap-up opening,
domestic bourses traded in tight band throughout the day's trade as traders
also took some encouragement with reports of India's exports exhibiting a
double digit growth of 17.48 percent, valued at $ 24.5 billion in February
compared to $ 20.84 billion during the same month last year on increase in
shipments of non-petroleum, non gems and jewellery products. Some support also
came with report that the GST Council is likely to endorse supplementary
legislations needed for implementation of the goods and service tax (GST)
regime. It may also take up capping the cess to be levied on demerit goods like
luxury cars and tobacco products for creation of a corpus that will be used for
compensating states for any loss of revenue from GST implementation in the
first five years. Also, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) enlightened that
India's economic growth is expected to pick up once the effects of cash
shortages linked to the currency exchange initiative fade. IMF in its note
highlighted that further subsidy reduction and tax reforms, including a robust
design and full implementation of the Goods and Services Tax (GST), are
necessary to attain medium-term fiscal consolidation plans. There was broad
based buying witnessed in the markets and apart from the blue chips, the
broader markets too participated strongly in the rally. On the sectoral front,
banking shares remained on buyers' radar as the Finance Minister Arun Jaitley
said, the government would consider setting up multiple oversight committees
under the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) to examine the cases of non-performing
assets (NPAs) referred by banks. Finally, the BSE Sensex surged 187.74 points
or 0.64% to 29,585.85, while the CNX Nifty was up by 68.90 points or 0.76% to
9153.70.
The US markets closed mostly
lower on Thursday, giving back some of the previous day's Federal
Reserve-inspired gains as a fall for health-care and utilities stocks pushed
the market into negative territory. Trading sentiment in Europe and the US was
also buoyed by the preliminary result of the Dutch election. Federal Reserve
Chair Janet Yellen stated that she sees a gradual increase in interest rates
this year and pointed out that the economy is getting closer to the Federal
Reserve's objectives. On the economy front, the number of Americans who applied
for unemployment benefits fell by 2,000 to 241,000 in mid-March, as layoffs
remained near the lowest level in decades. Two weeks ago, new claims had fallen
to the lowest level since early 1973. And they've come under the key 300,000
threshold for 106 straight weeks, the second-longest streak since the
mid-1960s. The four-week average of initial claims, meanwhile, rose by a scant
750 to 237,250. Continuing jobless claims declined by 30,000 to 2.03 million in
the week ended March 5. The Dow Jones Industrial Average lost 15.55 points or
0.07 percent to 20,934.55, S&P 500 dropped 3.88 points or 0.16 percent to
2,381.38, while the Nasdaq was up 0.71 points or 0.01 percent to 5,900.76.
Crude oil futures just after a
day of rally slipped back into red on Thursday, amid lingering doubts about
OPEC's supply quota plan. High levels of U.S. crude inventories sparked doubts
about the effectiveness of OPEC's plan to drain the flood of oil that continues
to suppress prices. OPEC's latest monthly report had revealed that Saudi
Arabian crude oil production rose to 10.011 million barrels a day, up from
9.748 million in January while the report also forecast a rise in production
from non-OPEC members in 2017. Benchmark crude oil futures for May delivery declined
by $0.11 or 0.2 percent to $48.75 on the New York Mercantile Exchange. In
London, Brent crude for May delivery ended tad lower by $0.01 at $51.81 on the
ICE.
Continuing
its uptrend for the fourth straight session, Indian rupee ended considerably
stronger against dollar on Thursday due to sustained selling of the US currency
by exporters and banks. Traders took some encouragement with the report that
India's merchandise exports expanded for the sixth consecutive month in
February. Exports grew by 17.48 percent to $24490.27 million in February 2017, on
the back of a jump in the value of shipments of engineering goods and petroleum
products. Moreover, good going in the local equity markets and dollar's
weakness overseas against a basket of major currencies, mainly aided the
currency's appreciation. On the global front, yen strengthened against dollar
after the Bank of Japan kept its monetary stimulus unchanged as widely
expected. Finally, the rupee ended at 65.41, 28 paise stronger from its
previous close of 65.69 on Wednesday.
The
FIIs as per Thursday's data were net buyers in equity and debt segments both. In
equity segment, the gross buying was of Rs 6066.88 crore against gross selling
of Rs 4648.77 crore, while in the debt segment, the gross purchase was of Rs
580.32 crore with gross sales of Rs 386.16 crore.
The US markets ended modestly in
red in the last session. The weakness on Wall Street was partly due to profit
taking following the strength seen in reaction to yesterday's monetary policy
announcement by the Federal Reserve. The Asian markets have made mostly a green
start, though the Japanese market was lower by over a quarter percent despite
the dollar steadying after two days of decline. The Indian markets rallied in
last session with benchmarks hitting new record highs on encouraging exports
data and continued strength in rupee. Today, the start is likely to be in green
and the markets will continue the momentum amid sanguine regional cues. Also,
traders will be getting support with the Goods and Services Tax (GST) Council,
finally giving its nod to all the five draft legislations needed for
implementation of the unified indirect tax, paving the way for the model laws -
central GST (CGST), state GST (SGST), integrated GST (IGST), Union Territory
GST (UTGST) and Compensation Act - to be presented in the ongoing Budget
session of Parliament after it is approved by the Union Cabinet. Meanwhile,
global rating agency Crisil has blamed divergent growth dataprints for WPI-CPI
variance. It said the main reason for the faster growth in manufacturing GDP is
that growth in the value of inputs used for production has been slower than the
value of the final output. The export oriented stocks will keep buzzing, as
buoyed by last month's double-digit export growth, the Federation of Indian
Export Organisations (FIEO) is looking at more export friendly measures to
sustain the growth rate in a challenging global environment.
Support and Resistance: NSE
(Nifty) and BSE (Sensex)
Index
|
Previous
close
|
Support
|
Resistance
|
NSE Nifty
|
9153.70
|
9135.35
|
9165.25
|
BSE Sensex
|
29585.85
|
29507.52
|
29639.48
|
Nifty Top volumes
Stock
|
Volume
(in Lacs)
|
Previous
close (Rs)
|
Support (Rs)
|
Resistance
(Rs)
|
IDEA
|
367.85
|
112.95
|
111.10
|
115.00
|
SBI
|
180.05
|
279.30
|
276.83
|
280.98
|
Hindalco
|
176.26
|
198.75
|
194.50
|
201.20
|
Tata Steel
|
103.92
|
499.65
|
487.40
|
506.45
|
ICICI Bank
|
97.38
|
284.50
|
282.15
|
287.15
|
Wipro has entered into partnership with Harte Hanks to offer marketing technology services.
HDFC Bank has launched an instant online loan against securities facility in collaboration with the National Securities Depository.
Axis Bank has opened its new branch in Nadiad, Gujarat.
- SBI and real estate developers' body CREDAI have signed a memorandum of understanding to jointly conduct various initiatives towards development of the realty sector.