Benchmarks continue to trade firm; Nifty above 5450 mark

Indian equity indices continue to trade firm on the back of euphoric mood by traders on the first day of F&O series. Investors too have started picking up high beta stocks in Realty and Bankex space paying no heed toward the weak economic reports from US, Eurozone debt crisis, local inflation numbers and apex bank's aggressive monetary tightening. Moreover, leads from markets across the globe remained encouraging as majority of Asian equity indices exhibited sanguine trends barring Shanghai Composite and Nikkei while the European counterparts too were trading in optimistic node. Back home, the NSE Nifty and BSE Sensex were trading above their psychological 5,450 and 18,200 levels, respectively. The market breadth on the BSE was in favor of advances in the ratio of 1726:971 while 106 scrips remained unchanged.

Besides, state-run oil marketing firms headed upwards; Bharat Petroleum (BPCL) 1.87%, Hindustan Petroleum (HPCL) 4.26%, Indian Oil (IOC) 3.21% and Mangalore Refinery & Petrochemicals (MRPL) 1.93% respectively on reports that a panel of ministers led by Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee will meet on June 09, 2011 and discuss the increase in diesel, kerosene and cooking gas prices.

The BSE Sensex gained 208.08 points or 1.15% at 18,252.72. The index touched a high and a low of 18,298.64 and 18,087.16 respectively.

The BSE Mid-cap index was up 1.46%, while the Small-cap index was trading with gain of 0.88%.

On the BSE sectoral front, Realty up 3.19%, Bankex up 2.19%, Metal up 1.87%, Oil & Gas up 1.60% and PSU up 1.28% were the top gainer. While, Auto down 1.46% and Consumer Durables down 0.59% were the only laggards in the BSE sectoral space.

The top gainers on the Sensex were RCom up 5.41%, Hindalco up 4.95%, Reliance Infra up 4.09%, DLF up 4.02% and ICICI Bank up 3.86%. On the flip side Tata Motors down 6.57%, Hero Honda down 1.86%, HUL down 1.26%, Maruti down 1.14% and Cipla down 0.17% were the major losers on the BSE index.

Meanwhile, India's handicrafts export saw a decent growth of around 14% to $204 million in April 2011 year-on-year (Y-O-Y) basis, mainly driven by the demand from traditional markets like Europe and US. According to the Export Promotion Council for Handicraft (EPCH) data, last year during the same period India's handcraft export were around $179.9 million. The EPCH and exporters are hopeful that exports would continue to grow in the present financial year due to increasing demand from the traditional as well as from the new emerging markets. 

'We expect the exports to touch $2.7 billion in 2011-12 due to increasing demand not only from the US and Europe, but also from emerging markets like Middle East, Latin America and Africa,' EPCH Executive Director Rakesh Kumar said.

The items which registered the maximum growth were wood wares up by 26.9%, followed by jewellery around 21%, shawls as art wares around 19%, miscellaneous handicraft 15% and metal wares by 13.49%.

The growth in export for the month of April follows the impressive jump of about 26% to $2.3 billion in April-March 2010-11, as compared to a year ago. In line with the country's total merchandise exports which registered the highest ever growth of 37.5% to $245.9 billion in 2010-11. Approximately 60% of country's handicraft is exported to Europe and US, but the whole year growth was driven by the growing demand from new markets like Latin America and Africa. As to reduce dependence on western markets, the exporters started exploring new markets like Latin America, Asia and Africa. The government too has introduced incentives for exporters to diversify and boost their trade with emerging markets like Latin America and Caribbean region.

The S&P CNX Nifty gained 61.70 points or 1.14% at 5,474.05. The index touched high and low of 5,485.80 and 5,413.60 respectively.

The top gainers on the Nifty were IDFC up 6.28%, RPower up 6.04%, RCom up 5.86%, Hindalco up 5.01% and Reliance Infra up 4.49%.  While, Tata Motors down 6.58%, Hero Honda down 2.38%, Ambuja Cement down 2.17%, HUL down 1.94% and GAIL down 1.81% were the major losers on the index.

On the Asian front, Hang Seng added 0.95%, Jakarta Composite climbed 0.46%, KLSE Composite gained 0.50%, Straits Times up 0.69%, Seoul Composite up 0.40% and Taiwan Weighted rose 0.25% while on the other hand Nikkei 225 down by 0.42% and Shanghai Composite slipped down by 0.98%.

The European markets were trading in green. CAC 40 up 1.10%, DAX climbed up 0.52% and FTSE 100 up 0.91%.

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