Benchmarks continue their jubilant mood; Nifty surpass 5,500 mark

The Indian equity markets have made a firm start tracking positive cues from global indices. The US markets closed modestly higher overnight as the Japanese worries along with report that new single-family homes plunged to the lowest on record in February capped the gains. Asian counterparts were trading mostly in the positive terrain also aided the sentiments. Back home, sustained buying in almost all the key heavyweights along with broader indices supported NSE's -- Nifty -- and BSE's -- Sensex -- to cross their crucial 5,500 and 18,300 mark, respectively. Realty witnessed the maximum gain in trade followed by metal and banking with no losers on the BSE sectoral space. Moreover, Lovable Lingerie, the new listing, got marvelous response from the investors and is trading with a gain of over 30% at this point of time. The broader indices were going neck to neck with benchmarks. The market breadth on the BSE was positive; there were 1163 shares on the gaining side against 390 shares on the losing side while 64 shares remained unchanged.

The BSE Sensex opened at 18,286.42; about 80 points higher compared to its previous closing of 18,206.16, and has touched a high of 18,286 while low remain its opening.

The index is currently trading at 18,351.26, up by 145.10 points or 0.80%. There were 29 stocks advancing against just 1 decline on the index.

The overall market breadth has made a strong start with 71.92% stocks advancing against 24.12% declines. The broader indices were performing in line with benchmarks; the BSE Mid cap and Small cap indices surged 0.75% and 0.79% respectively. 

The top gaining sectoral indices on the BSE were, Realty up by 1.61%, Metal up by 1.26%, Bankex up by 1.26%, CG up by 1.06% and Auto was up by 0.86%. While there were no losers on the index.

The top gainers on the Sensex were Hindalco up by 2.80%, ICICI Bank up by 2.20%, Sterlite Industries up by 1.87%, BHEL up by 1.79% and Tata Motors was up by 1.52%.

Tata Power down by 0.05% was the lone loser on the index.

Meanwhile, in order to bring in more transparency and detect corruption, the Government of India (GoI) has decided to introduce a new financial reporting format for companies. The new format will not only enable better organization of data in standardized formats, but will also help detect fraudulent entries and calculations. It will enable the government to better monitor layered corporate structures and the new system is particularly useful in cases where companies have subsidiaries, which in turn have auxiliary units.

The government has decided to make it mandatory for companies to file annual returns using XBRL (eXtensible Business Reporting Language), from July this year. According to the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India (ICAI) and the Ministry of Corporate Affairs (MCA), XBRL, a tool fast emerging as the favored financial reporting format worldwide is a computer language used for reporting financial statements and it can help the Indian government detect corruption and wastage of funds in state-run programmes such as the rural jobs guarantee plan.

With the introduction of this new system, the government will be able to find out things like leakages, misuse, under utilization of funds, etc. at much disaggregated levels. Besides this, it will also help in providing a common database which can be used by the stock exchanges, capital markets regulators, etc. Presently, the Registrar of Companies manually checks the annual reports of companies to see the way they are operating their structures. The process is daunting in the face of insufficient resources and the registrar's authority is seldom put to effective use.

In India, this system is at very nascent stage as only Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) and the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) are using this tool as part of their regulatory filings. The government though is pushing to adopt this system at the earliest as it will make reporting of data more uniform and will be accommodative of Goods & Service tax (GST) regime which is expected to be implemented in the next financial year. GST, India's most far-reaching tax reform, aims to integrate the country into a common market by dismantling fiscal barriers between states.

The S&P CNX Nifty opened at 5,501.80; about 21 points higher compared to its previous closing of 5,480.25, and has touched a high and a low of 5,528.25 and 5,500.75 respectively.

The index is currently trading at 5,522.00, higher by 41.75 points or 0.76%. There were 45 stocks advancing against just 5 declines on the index.

The top gainers of the Nifty were Hindalco up by 2.93%, ICICI Bank up by 2.12%, BHEL up by 1.73%, Kotak Bank up by 1.72% and Sterlite Industries up by 1.51%.

GAIL down by 1.04%, CAIRN down by 0.47%, Suzlon down by 0.22%, HUL down by 0.11% and Tata Power was down by 0.06%, were the major losers on the index.

Asian markets were trading mostly in the green; Shanghai Composite was up 2.77 points or 0.09% to 2,951.25, Hang Seng was up 173.39 points or 0.76% to 22,998.79, Jakarta Composite was up 35.74 points or 1.00% to 3,591.97, KLSE Composite was up 0.98 points or 0.06% to 1,512.95, Straits Times was up 25.90 points or 0.86% to 3,048.09, Seoul Composite was up 17.96 points or 0.89% to 2,030.14, Taiwan Weighted was up 38.60 points or 0.45% to 8,583.68.

On the flip side, Nikkei 225 was down 14.18 points or 0.15% to 9,435.29.

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