Nifty hovers around 8950; Sensex higher on IT, telecom support

10:58 AM Market Check:The Sensex was up 82.05 points at 28946.76, while the Nifty had risen 26.35 points at 8953.25. The market’s breadth remains to be narrow. About 1,206 shares have advanced, 1,015 shares have declined, while 155 shares remained unchanged.

10:48 AM Whistleblower complaint taken up by Infy panel: Infosys has said that its audit committee has taken up the anonymous complaints sent to market regulator Sebi and a section of media and will be probing the allegations as per the company policy.

“The whistle blower complaints have been placed before the audit committee and as is normal practice, in accordance with the company’s whistle blower policy, the audit committee is taking steps to initiate an investigation into the allegations made,” Infosys said in a BSE filing.

10:40 AM Saving habits: Abhay Laijawala of Deutsche Bank says the architecture of the financial savings of Indian households is undergoing a structural shift. This has already been witnessed in the rising share of financial assets in household savings rising from 32 percent in FY12 to 40 percent in FY15 & an unprecedented wave of inflows into domestic equity mutual funds over the past three years.

He believes this trend is set to intensify further and, in an optimistic scenario, average annual household flows into equities over FY18-20 could be 2x the past three years’ average of total flows into equity mutual funds.

Laijawala says midcaps should attract a disproportionate amount of funds from domestic & institutional investors and should continue to outperform large cap indices.

10:28 AM dividend Payouts: As many as 88 listed companies can pay dividends worth Rs 27,600 crore but many continue to hold cash stockpile, according to proxy advisory firm IiAS.

In a report released on Thursday, IiAS said companies clearly continue to hold cash stockpiles and must consider paying higher dividends. Based on an analysis of the financials of S&P BSE 500 firms for the fiscal 2016, the report said 88 companies paid Rs 278 billion (Rs 27,800 crore) as aggregate dividend in FY 2015-16 and can additionally pay Rs 276 billion (Rs 27,600 crore).

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Equity benchmarks continued its upward movement amid consolidation ahead of February derivative contracts’ expiry, supported by telecom and technology stocks.

The 30-share Sensex was up over 63 points at 28928.42 points, while the Nifty was up 19 points at 8946.05. The market’s breadth was narrow, with 1,058 shares having advanced, 869 shares having declined. Meanwhile, 121 shares remained unchanged.

Telecom stocks Bharti Airtel and Idea Cellular soared on the back of consolidation buzz in the telecom stake.

Bharti Airtel rose 10 percent intraday after it announced the acquisition of Telenor India. Meanwhile, Idea Cellular rose around 8 percent after media reports indicated that Japanese fund SoftBank may buy some stake in the merged entity (Vodafone-Idea).

TCS and Infosys gained strength after sell-off in previous session, up 1-2 percent whereas ICICI Bank, ITC, Axis Bank, Tata Motors and Maruti Suzuki were under pressure.