February 22: mid-session report

The Indian markets witnessed  choppy trading sessions with benchmark indices moving either side during the first half of the trading session. Markets opened the day with a high before giving up all the gains to trade in a flat zone. The broader market gained almost 0.5 per cent before coming down from the day’s high. Benchmark indices opened in green and saw resistance from upper levels of 7250.

Nifty was trading up by 7 points at 7218 and the Sensex by 35 points at 23743. Both the leading indicators were trading up with minor gains of 0.10 and 0.13 per cent respectively.

The advance-decline ratio showed the same trend as most of the stocks traded in green. 1259 scrips were trading in the positive territory, 865 scrips were in red, however 125 stocks remained unchanged on the NSE.

Top Nifty Gainers: BOSCH is leading the gainers list as it was trading up by close to 3.40 per cent followed by HUL, Zee Entertainment, Bharti Airtel and UltraTech Cement which were up 2.82, 2.51, 2.02, and 1.85 per cent respectively.

Top Nifty Losers: Tech Mahindra was leading the losers list down more than 2.54 per cent, followed by Vedanta and ITC which are down anywhere between 2.5 per cent to 2.20 per cent.

All the major sectors were trading in green except for Bank Nifty and BSE IT index. BSE Healthcare was leading the way with gains of close to 1 per cent. Followed by BSE Oil & Gas and BSE Realty sector which were trading up by 0.65 and 0.60 per cent respectively. BSE Small-Caps was trading up by 0.32 per cent. BSE Mid- Cap index too was trading with gains of 0.42 per cent.

Chinese benchmark index CSI was trading up with gains of 1.83 per cent. Japanese Nikkei was up by more than 0.90 per cent in trade. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng was up almost 0.70 per cent in late trade. However, Korean Topix was trading flat.

In commodities, Oil prices recovered on Monday following steep losses in the previous session, supported by a fall in the number of U.S. rigs in use, but analysts said general oversupply was keeping the market weak. U.S. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude futures CLc1 rose nearly half a dollar from their last settlement to above $30 per barrel, trading at $30.11 at 0413 GMT. International benchmark Brent LCOc1 was up 45 cents at $33.46 per barrel. Both contracts fell almost 4 percent on Friday.

Buzzer: - IDBI Bank was buzzing in trade as it was trading up by 1.7 per cent to Rs 55.80 on the back news regarding the planned raising of Rs 1500 crore via preferential allotment to LIC.

Asian share markets edged cautiously higher on Monday as investors awaited a rush of February industry surveys to take the pulse of the global economy. Germany's DAX and France's CAC are expected to flat with negative bias.

Second half is expected to  remain choppy as benchmark indices are likely to take global cues in account.