Markets Manage To Put Gains On The Board

The Indian markets today remained choppy for the whole day, giving no clues about its ending. At opening, the indices were under the pressure of uncertainty created by a range of the factors such as the RBI’s action on the rate front, lower IIP data, S&P’s warning with regard to a credit rating downgrade, etc. Investors were not able to understand what to do in such a highly speculative environment. One thing that would have pleased investors is that the benchmark indices as well most of the sectors managed to post some gains by the end of the day's trade. Overall though, the day remained high uncertain.

The global indices traded in positives today. There was some pressure on the Asian indices in the morning hours, the markets managed to deal with this and remained positive for the day. The Shanghai market managed to post healthy 1.26% gains by closing. Nikkei and Hang Seng were also up by over 0.6% each.

The European markets were mixed at the time of writing this report. FTSE is trading flat, while CAC is marginally down. DAX is up 0.32%.

On the sectoral front, Capital Goods outperformed the broader indices and was up 1.58%. Major stocks in the index such as L&T, BHEL, Alstom, etc. were up. FMCG was also up by over 1%. Among the others, the interest rate-sensitive stocks gave up their gains by closing time. Both Auto and Realty were down by over 1%, while Bankex was also marginally lower.

Among the Sensex stocks, HUL was up by 3%. The shares of ONGC were on the buyers list, and the stock gained 2.83%. Sun Pharma, Jindal Steel, ICICI and L&T were each up by over 1%. Maruti Suzuki was down by 3% as the company is going ahead with the merger with Suzuki Powertrain. RIL closed with -0.84% losses as KG-D6 output are expected to be even lower.

The Vijay Mallya-headed companies like Kingfisher Airlines, United Breweries and United Spirits were in significant gains. United Breweries and United Spirits were up over 6% each by closing.

Reliance Communications' stocks gained over 2% over news that its IPO in Singapore has been approved.

Indraprastha Gas, PFC, IRB Infra and JP Infratech all gained by 4% today. Cairn India has announced a special dividend, and we expect the shares of the company to go up tomorrow.

The market sentiment remained mainly mixed for the entire day, turning positive by closing time.

The markets have not shown any significant impact over these strong cues. The trend of the markets have been slightly different from the global indices. With domestic factors dominating Indian equities, we expect the markets to remain highly volatile for the rest of this week.