February 18: mid-session report

The Indian markets witnessed a strong rally in the initial hours of trade, courtesy to strong closing in the US markets and strong opening seen in Asia. The broader market gained almost 1 per cent before coming down from the day’s high. Benchmark indices opened in green and saw resistance from upper levels of 7200. The buying primarily came in from CNX Pharma and CNX Metals index.

Nifty was trading up by more than 56 points at 7164 and the Sensex by 196 points at 23576. Both the leading indicators were trading up with gains of 0.75 and 0.84 per cent respectively.

The advance-decline ratio showed the same trend as most of the stocks traded in green. 1485 scrips were trading in the positive territory, 706 scrips were in red, however 133 stocks remained unchanged on the NSE.

Top Nifty Gainers: Dr. Reddy’s Lab is leading the gainers list as it was trading up by close to 5.01 per cent followed by Cain India, Hindalco Industries, L&T and ONGC which were up 4.49, 4.10, 3.74 and 3.44 per cent respectively.

Top Nifty Losers: BHEL was leading the losers list down more than 3.03 per cent, followed by Idea Cellular and Asian Paints which are down between 2.36 per cent to 1.81 per cent.

All the major sectors were trading in green. BSE Capital Goods was leading the way with gains of 1.8 per cent. Followed by BSE Healthcare and BSE IT, which were trading up by 1.37 and 1.10 per cent respectively. BSE Small-Caps were trading up by 0.80 per cent. BSE Mid- Cap index too was trading with minor gains of 0.18 per cent.

Chinese benchmark index CSI opened with minor gains of 0.05 per cent. Japanese Nikkei surged more than 2.30 per cent in trades. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng was up almost 2 per cent in late trade. Korean Kospi was also up by 2.25 per cent.

In commodities, Crude oil remained the main market driver. U.S. crude was up 2.1 per cent at USD 31.34 a barrel following a 7 percent jump on Wednesday after Iran voiced support for a Russia-Saudi-led move to freeze production to deal with the market glut that had pushed prices to 12-year lows.

Buzzer: - Dr Reddy’s Lab was buzzing in trade as it was trading up by 5 per cent to Rs 3109 on account of the news regarding the planned buyback getting management's green signal.

Asian stocks rose across the board on Thursday as crude oil extended gains on hopes that big producers will cap output, improving investor sentiment for riskier assets. Germany's DAX and France's CAC are expected to open in green. UK’s FTSE 100 has also opened with gains.

Second half is expected to remain steady with gains.