Markets show sluggish movement in early noon trade

Stock markets are showing lackadaisical movements in the Friday afternoon session lacking investor conviction to pile up fresh positions in the volatile market conditions. The indices maintain to move sideways in a narrow range as corporate India continues to divulge its fourth quarterly report card and investors are indulging only in stock specific activities. Leads from the Asian and European counterparts remained highly unsupportive giving no significant direction to the domestic indices while decline in international crude oil prices too failed to enthuse the local sentiments. The BSE Capital Goods index has done the maximum damage so far as shaving off 1.23% after majors like L&T and Crompton Greaves took nasty cuts of 2.07% and 10.37% respectively. While the banking stocks exerted their share of pressure by declining 0.75% on the back of 0.77% and 1.71% losses in majors like SBI and HDFC Bank respectively. However, the downside remained capped for the benchmarks with the support of Index heavyweight RIL that has advanced by over half a percent on the buzz that Reliance group is in talks to purchase stake held by Bharti Enterprises in an insurance joint venture with AXA Group. Moreover, Stocks like Kohinoor Foods and LT foods spurted by 1.60% and 3.23% respectively after reports opined that Farm ministry has proposed 16% rise in buying price of rice. However, it also suggested that the rise was only applicable to non basmati rice.

Meanwhile, the broader markets too are trading lacking any enthusiasm as the midcap index has eased 0.06% while the smallcap index traded with 0.42% losses. The market breadth on the BSE was in favor of declines in the ratio of 1156:1419 while 98 scrips remained unchanged.

The BSE Sensex fell by 38.39 points or 0.20% at 19,253.63. The index touched a high and a low of 19,356.50 and 19,212.63 respectively.

The BSE Mid-cap index fell by 0.06% and Small-cap index was down 0.42%.

On the BSE sectoral front, FMCG up 1.27%, Healthcare up 0.88% and Oil and Gas up 0.39% were the only gainers.

On the other hand, Capital Goods down 1.23%, Bankex down 0.75%, Consumer Durables down 0.45%, Metal down 0.28% and Auto down 0.25% were the major laggards in the space.

The top gainers on the Sensex were HUL up 2.53%, Maruti Suzuki up 1.29%, RCom up 1.10%, BHEL up 1.03% and JP Associates up 1%.

On the flip side only Jindal Steel down 1.70%, HDFC bank down 1.67%, L&T down 1.63%, M&M down 1.49% and Hero Honda down 1.48% were the major losers on the index.

Meanwhile, with the positions of the developed and emerging nations continuing to remain wide apart at the Doha round of multilateral trading treaty under World Trade Organisation (WTO), the US has put the onus of completion of the deal on emerging nations including India, China and Brazil.

The US trade representative Ron Kirk said on Thursday that the largest economy in world was hoping for positive contribution from the emerging economies in order to bridge the gaps in Doha negotiations and seal the deal by next year. He however conceded that at present the gaps between respective positions of the US and Europe on one hand and emerging and developing economies on the other hand were too large to be easily bridged.

'Doha is undergoing a challenging period. Reports and texts issued last week in Geneva confirm what we and others have been saying that the gaps are large after more than two years of dedicated efforts to narrow them through bilateral negotiations with key partners,' the US trade representative said. He added that emerging countries should recognize that they will have to bear greater responsibility in ensuring a successful deal in proportion with their increasing economic clout.

The biggest difference on position of two countries comes from sectoral negotiations and farm sector access. There was a clause in Doha round negotiations that there would be separate negotiations between the US and emerging countries including India and China regarding cutting down the tariffs for import of manufactured products at sectoral levels. This however was supposed to be a voluntary negotiation between the two sides and was not to be made mandatory under the final lines of Doha deal.

Now the US wants emerging nations to first give a commitment to mandatorily participate in the sectoral negotiations before it would agree with the already negotiated farm and NAMA (non-agricultural market access) agreements. Emerging nations while have offered to participate in sectoral negotiations voluntarily, they continue to oppose any mandatory clause in this regard to be introduced into the Doha deal agreement. Similarly, the issue of huge farm subsidies of developed countries and restricted access to farm commodities by emerging countries also remain key issues where agreement seems very difficult.

The S&P CNX Nifty eased 4.35 points or 0.08% at 5,781.10. The index touched high and low of 5,804.30 and 5,764.50, respectively.

The top gainers on the Nifty were Sun Pharma up 3%, Ambuja Cement up 2.39%, HUL up 2.38%, Maruti up 1.69% and Siemens up 1.61%.

On the other hand, Axis Bank down 2.14%, HDFC Bank down 1.61%, L&T down 1.53%, Jindal Steel down 1.52% and HDFC down 1.51% were the major losers on the index.

On the Asian front, only Shanghai Composite was up 0.75%, while on flipside, Hang Seng was down 0.43%, Jakarta Composite was down 0.27%, KLSE Composite was down 0.23%, Strait Times was down 0.34%, Seoul Composite was down 0.72% and Taiwan Weighted was down 0.36%.

Japanese markets remained closed for a public holiday.

The European markets have opened a negative note as the France's CAC 40 fell 0.44%, Germany's DAX shed 0.04%.

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