Sensex, Nifty Up After RBI Keeps Key Rates Unchanged

The markets were trading flat in the early morning ahead of RBI policy review at 11 am. However the markets recovered after the announcement where the central bank decided to keep the key rates unchanged. The 30-share Sensex was up by 43 points at 26640 and 50-share Nifty was up by 19 points at 7978. The RBI kept the Repo rate and the Reverse repo rate untouched at 8% and 7%. Similarly the central bank kept the CRR and the MSF rates unchanged at 4% and 9%. The RBI has kept the bank's mandatory bond holding ratio uninterrupted at 22%. The SLR for the commercial banks remained unchanged at 22%. However, the next target for the central government is to bring the inflation rate at 6% which could be challenging.

Tracking the momentum of the sectoral indices, BSE Consumer Durables was the top gainer and was up by 1.66%. Among the gainers, HDFC was seen trading up by 1.55%. IDFC was up by 1.14% after the company sold its real estate investments for an enterprise value of Rs 1100 crore. Strides Arcolab was trading up by 3.38% after the company agreed to buy Shashun Pharma in all-stock deal, valued around $200 million. However, Shashun Pharma was trading down by 1.28% after the deal. Among the losers, Powergrid and TCS were trading down by 1.40% and 1.33% respectively. Hindalco was trading down by 1.66% after the government cancelled approvals of Special Economic Zones (SEZs).
 
Further a weak trend was seen in the Asian markets due to the ongoing political unrest in Hong Kong. Japan's Nikkei was trading down by 1.06%. Hong Kong's Hang Seng was trading down by 1.20% and China's Shanghai slipped down by 0.10%.