India : Sensex opens flat, Nifty below 8600; Tata Motors up 3%, SBI down
The market has opened flat reacting to Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen’s comments on rate hikes. The Sensex is up 39.01 points or 0.1 percent at 27821.26, and the Nifty is up 11.20 points or 0.1 percent at 8583.75. About 172 shares have advanced, 93 shares declined, and 17 shares are unchanged.
Tata Motors, L&T, Cipla, Sun Pharma and Asian Paints are top gainers while Adani Ports, Lupin, Bharti, SBI and Axis are losers in the Sensex.
Forex losses that Tata Motors incurred in June quarter is troubling analysts though most feel that the auto major will weather the turbulence. Tata’s Q1 results were dragged down by forex losses at Jaguar Land Rover(JLR) even as India business continued to improve.
Its mark-to-market (MTM) forex impact on euro payables, FX losses on realised hedges, a weaker product-mix (higher share of Jaguar) and the operating leverage impact ofpower volumes on a QoQ basis impacted its earnings in June quarter.
As pound fell to a 31-year-low as Britain voted to exit from European Unionon June 24, the auto major with British Subsidiary Jaguar Land Rover lost Rs Rs 2296 crore from its profit while adverse commodity derivatives blew a hole of Rs 167 crore.
Financial services major Goldman Sachs has marginally revised upwards its India CPI forecast to 5.5 percent for the fiscal citing higher food prices but said the upside risks are limited due to delay in the rollout of the pay commission award.According to the global major, narrowing of the output gap and abating favourable base effects from weak commodity prices may lead to an rise in inflation.
“We mechanically adjust our FY17 headline CPI inflation forecasts upwards to 5.5 percent yoy, from 5.3 percent earlier, due to higher than expected food inflation readings year-to-date,” Goldman Sachs said in a research note, adding core inflation is expected to average 4.8 percent yoy this fiscal from 4.6 percent a year ago.
In what has become a clear positive trend, the Asia Pacific ex-Japan earnings revision ratio improved in August for the sixth consecutive month from 0.81 to 0.88, Nigel Tupper of Bank of America Merrill Lynch says.
In the past when the ratio has been rising and near this level, Asia Pacific ex-Japan has rallied 14 percent in the subsequent 12 months, on average.
“Also, our macro indicator, the Global Wave, remains positive on equities and cyclicals and this persistent earnings recovery should sustain the rotation into cyclical assets,” Tupper says.
The Indian rupee opened lower by 8 paise at 67.14 per dollar versus 67.06 Friday.
Pramit Brahmbhatt of Veracity said, “Interest rate speculation will continue to keep the USD higher. We expect the USD-INR pair to trade in the range of 66.90-67.20/dollar today.”
The dollar was near a two-week high against the yen after comments from Central Bank chiefs at the weekend reinforced the divergence between monetary policy in the US and other parts of the world.
Bank of Japan governor Haruhiko Kuroda reiterated a pledge to ease monetary policy further if necessary, saying that he would bolster economic stimulus “without hesitation.”
Most Asian share markets slipped while the US dollar held firm. MSCI’s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan slid 0.7 percent.
Japan’s Nikkei, bucked the trend and climbed 2.2 percent as the yen weakened against the resurgent dollar.
The case for a rate hike has strengthened in recent months, with a lot of new jobs being created, and economic growth is looking likely to continue at a moderate pace, Yellen said in a speech at the Fed’s annual monetary policy conference in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, on Friday.
