Crude Shock Drags Markets

The Indian equity markets have opened flat today despite the positive cues from Europe. The surge in crude oil prices has impacted the markets today, pulled the Oil & Gas and Auto indices down.

The Asian indices are trading firmly in gains after the EU summit ended with positive signals for the markets last week. Japanese Nikkei is up 0.34% while the Shanghai market is trading flat.

Meanwhile, the HSBC PMI for China has hit a 7-month low of 48.2 for Jun 2012, indicating a slowdown in the economy. This is the seventh straight month of a below-50 reading. It is now expected that China will ease its monetary and fiscal policies to boast the economy.

Among the sectoral indices, Realty and CD have topped the charts, up by 1.2% each. The Power index is trading in positives, as we expected. The VKS IPO has been subscribed by 0.5x as of now.

Among the Sensex participants, Maruti Suzuki is up by nearly 2%. BHEL is also on the buyers list, and the stock is up by 1.4%. GAIL, NTPC and Bharti Airtel are the other stocks that have shown over 1% gains at this time.

On the other hand, Jindal Steel is down by 1.81%. Hero MotorCorp, ONGC, Bajaj Auto are also trading with losses of more than 1% each. The shares of ICICI Bank are trading in the red after the news that the bank has sold its Kingfisher Airlines debt exposure to SREI.

Dr. Reddy's Labs has announced the launch of Ibandronate Sodium tablets in the US market. The company's shares have given up most of their morning losses and are trading flat.

Techno Electric & Engineering has announced a dividend of Rs 2 on the face value of Rs 2. The share price is up by 0.83%.

The market breadth is positive at this moment.

Bajaj Finance, HDFC Bank and ITC are trading at new highs. Top turnover is seen in the shares like Adani Enterprises, SBI, Cairn India, L&T, ICICI Bank. Top volumes are seen in Lanco Infra, Kingfisher Airlines, OnMobile Global etc.

Ahead in the day, we expect the markets to remain volatile with a positive bias.