Domestic Developments Keep Markets Higher

The Indian markets continued with their winning streak for the fourth straight trading session. Key information on each day helped the markets maintain their momentum. Today, what became the reason for the street to cheer was clearly Finance Minister P Chidambaram's proposition in Parliament to set up the National Investment Board (NIB). The board would monitor and advise ministries on expediting projects entailing investments in excess of Rs 1,000 crore.

This saw the markets completely ignoring the other potential driver, i.e. the weaker set of GDP numbers that came out during the day. The GDP growth of the country grew by 5.3% for the second quarter of FY13, compared to 6.9% that witnessed in the same quarter last year.

The Sensex closed the day 0.88% above its previous closing and sustained its 19000 level. Nifty notched up gains of 0.94%. The gains were duly supported by high volumes that were seen towards the end of the day.

The market breadth also remained positive, with almost 55% of the stocks closing above their previous close. Over 40% of stocks closed in the red.

In the sectoral indices, barring Auto, FMCG and Realty, all the other indices closed in green. The major gainer was the Metals sector that was up by 2.07%, followed by the Power index, which gained 1.77%.

In terms of stocks, the major gainers in the 'A' group were UltraTech Cement and Bayer Corp, which zoomed up 7.91% and 5.91% respectively. Zee Entertainment and Container Corporation were the worst performers, losing 3.58% and 3.03% respectively during the day.

The story is no different for global indices. All the key Asian indices have closed in the green, and the European markets are currently trading higher.

Next week, a lot of economic data is expected to come in, including the manufacturing and service PMI for November 2012, and these numbers will steer the markets.