Market Live: Sensex off early highs, up over 100 pts; ITC soars 6% post CBEC move

9:50 am Buzzing Stock: Ashok Leyland rallied as much as 4.9 percent in morning trade on Monday after the Indian commercial vehicle manufacturer registered sales growth of 11 percent on a year-on-year (YoY) basis to 12,330 units for the month of June 2017.

The company had sold 11,108 units in June 2016 as reported in a BSE filing.

9:32 am Market Update: Equity benchmarks’ opening gains reduced by more than 50 percent due to correction in HDFC Group, oil, infra and select technology stocks.

ITC also erased some opening gains but still maintained its top position in the buying list among Sensex stocks, up 6 percent.

The 30-share BSE Sensex was up 130.52 points at 31,052.13 and the 50-share NSE Nifty rose 30.75 points to 9,551.65.

About 1,067 shares advanced against 438 declining shares on the BSE.

9:25 am Fund flows into India: Sanjeev Prasad of Kotak Institutional Equities said listed fund flows to India continued to be net buyers since the beginning of CY17.

India has received USD 1.8 billion of inflows, driven by USD 943 million of ETF inflows and USD 856 million of non-ETF inflows, he added.

He further said Global Emerging Market (GEM) funds saw USD 988 million of inflows, led by USD 617 million of ETF inflows. India-dedicated funds saw an inflow of USD 614 million, he added.

Allocations to India and China constitute more than one-third of the average Asia ex-Japan fund portfolio. Allocation to India by Asia ex-Japan funds has come down to 13.3 percent in May from 13.6 percent in April.

Fund allocation to India by GEM funds remained around 11 percent. Allocation by Asia ex-Japan non-ETF funds to India came down to 13.9 percent from 14.2 percent in the previous month, Prasad said.

9:15 am Market Check: Equity benchmarks started off the week on a strong note, with the Sensex surging nearly 300 points driven by ITC but immediately erased some gains due to correction in select banks and technology stocks.

The 30-share BSE Sensex was up 157.16 points at 31,078.77 and the 50-share NSE Nifty rose 38.30 points to 9,559.20.

ITC rallied 8 percent after the Central Board of Excise and Customs (CBEC), over the weekend, removed excise and additional excise duty on cigarettes, while the National Calamity Contingent continued to remain.

HUL, ICICI Bank and Infosys were other gainers while Wipro, HDFC, HCL Technologies, TCS and Reliance Industries were under pressure.

Nifty Midcap gained 0.35 percent on positive market breadth as about three shares advanced for every share falling on the NSE.
Emami Infra, Zandu Realty, Godfrey Phillips, Kalpataru Power, JMC Projects, Shiva Cement, Dilip Buildcon, MEP Infra and Jaiprakash Associates were up 1-6 percent while Jet Airways fell over 2 percent followed by InterGlobe Aviation.