Markets Trading Positive, Metals Up 1.7%

As we expected in our morning update, owing to the positive domestic and global cues, the Indian markets have opened the day in the positive. The benchmark Sensex is trading up with 124 points' gains and Nifty is up by 35 points. Yesterday's positive auto cars numbers were seen positively by the street. The March PMI data fell slightly to 54.7 from 56.6 in February 2012, but the fact that it has remained over the 50 mark indicates a healthy situation.

Other Asian markets are giving mixed signals at this time. The Hang Seng is up by 0.46% and Nikkei has declined by 0.58%. The Shanghai market is closed for the day.

Among the sectoral indices, Metals are up 1.74%. The CD index is also up 1.64%, largely held by TTK Prestige and Titan Industries. Among the other indices, Realty, Bankex and CG are each up by over 1%. Auto is the only index that is trading in the negative.

From the Sensex stocks, Hindalco, Tata Steel and Sterlite are up over 2% each. In the banking space, ICICI Bank has shot up by 1.59%, while SBI and HDFC Bank are also up over 1%. Energy stocks such as Tata Power, GAIL India, Coal India, RIL and ONGC are also trading in the green. IT major, TCS, however is seen in the negatives. Hero MotoCorp is also down by 0.5%. M&M and Maruti Suzuki are both marginally down. Sun Pharma is currently trading in negatives, and may turn into the positives ahead today.

Of the other stocks, Pantaloon Retail is up 7%, JP Associates is up nearly 4% and TTK Prestige is up by 3.3%. The staff of Kingfisher Airlines has said that they will stop work if their salary arrears are not paid today; the stock, however, is up 4%. We expect some news on the Presidential directive to Coal India soon, which would lift the Power and Capital Goods stocks. Investors would do well to keep looking at the volumes and the news inflow on that front.

The market breadth, which indicates the overall health of the market, is positive. Out of a total of 2016 stocks, 1511 stocks advanced and 516 stocks declined. 79 stocks remained unchanged.

We expect the markets to remain positive today.