Sensex ends rangebound session higher; Midcap outperforms again
Equity benchmarks closed rangebound session marginally higher on Tuesday, tracking positive global cues. Investors maintained cautious stance ahead of GST council meet that started today and after the weak core sector data. The broader markets continued to outperform on positive breadth.The 30-share BSE Sensex was up 47.79 points at 26643.24. The 50-share NSE Nifty rose 12.75 points to close at 8192.25 after hitting an intraday high of 8219.10.
Ashok Wadhwa, Group CEO of Ambit says he retained his cautious stance on the market in short term, though he remained positive for medium to long term. He expects further dips in the market, which can be used for buying quality stocks.
Sridhar Sivaram of Enam Holdings believes earnings growth will be near 0 percent in FY17 due to demonetisation but in FY18, he expects 10-12 percent earnings growth.
The BSE Midcap index climbed 0.6 percent and Smallcap 1 percent as about two shares advanced for every share falling on the exchange.
European stocks were trading higher following good figures from China and Europe. France’s CAC and Britain’s FTSE were up 0.3-0.5 percent at the time of writing this article. Asia ended higher, following a pickup in China’s factory activities for December. China’s Shanghai Composite, Hong Kong’s Hang Seng, Australia’s ASX 200 and South Korea’s Kospi gained 0.7-1.2 percent.
Crude oil prices hit 18-month high today, up more than 2 percent, buoyed by hopes that a deal between OPEC and non-OPEC members to cut production, which kicked in on Sunday, will drain a global supply glut.
Meanwhile, core sector output growth slowed down to 4.9 percent in November 2016 from 6.6 percent recorded in previous month.
Bharti Airtel was the biggest loser among Sensex 30 stocks, down 2.4 percent after it has offered free data for 12 months to customers who switch to Airtel 4G and 3 GB free data every month till December 31 on select 4G plans. Idea Cellular was also down 2 percent.
Tata Motors fell over a percent on profit booking after yesterday’s 3 percent rally factored in its December auto sales data. Hero Motocorp was down 1.4 percent while TVS Motor gained 3 percent post sales numbers.
Infosys shares declined 0.7 percent on management’s caution note. The IT major’s chief Vishal Sikka told employees that the road ahead is long and not easy stressing the importance of automation and warned against “lackadaisical” attitude towards greater value creation.
Banking stocks rebounded after yesterday’s sell-off. ICICI Bank and Axis Bank gained 1-2 percent followed by SBI with half a percent rise whereas HDFC Bank fell 0.6 percent.
Index heavyweights ITC, Reliance Industries and L&T rose 0.5-0.9 percent. Oil retailers IOC (up 5.8 percent), HPCL (up 3.3 percent) and BPCL (up 2.4 percent) extended gains following rise in crude oil prices.
