Local bourses pare gains after a decent start

The Indian equity markets have lost track after a decent start tracking positive cues from global equity indices. The US markets continued their upmove for yet another day on Friday while, all the Asian counterparts which are open today for the trade were in the positive terrain at this point of time.  The local markets pared all their initial gains and were trading flat as investors remained cautious ahead of the RBI's policy announcement tomorrow. The data showing sustained selling by foreign institutional investors last week too weighed on the sentiments. On the sectoral front consumer durables witnessed the maximum gain in trade followed by healthcare and technology while, banking, capital goods and public sector undertaking stocks remained the top losers on the BSE sectoral space. The broader indices too were trading flat . The market breadth has made a positive start; there were 804 shares on the gaining side against 751 shares on the losing side while 57 shares remained unchanged. Some important earnings announcements like Allahabad Bank, Bank of India, Century Enka, Ceat, Godrej Consumer Products, Marico will keep the markets buzzing.

The BSE Sensex opened at 19,224.05; about 90 points higher compared to its previous closing of 19,135.96, and has touched a high and a low of 19,253.87 and 19,066.22, respectively. The index is currently trading at 19,158.29, up by 22.33 points or 0.12%. There were 18 stocks advancing against 12 declines on the index.

The overall market breadth has made a positive start with 49.88% stocks advancing against 46.59% declines. The broader indices were trading on a flat note; the BSE Mid cap index was down by 0.02% while, Small cap index was up by 0.03%. 

The top gaining sectoral indices on the BSE were, CD up by 1.23%, HC up by 0.79%, TECk up by 0.73%, IT up by 0.70% and FMCG was up by 0.68%. While Bankex down by 1.01%, CG down by 0.36%, PSU down by 0.34% and Metal down by 0.28% were the only losers on the index.

The top gainers on the Sensex were Tata Power up by 1.35%, Bharti Airtel up by 1.24%, M&M up by 0.82%, HUL up by 0.81% and Infosys was up by 0.79%.

On the flip side, SBI down by 1.56%, Jindal Steels down by 1.33%, L&T down by 1.15%, HDFC Bank down by 0.55% and ICICI Bank down by 0.55% were the top losers on the index.

Meanwhile, India's imports of pulses for the current crop year spanning July-June 2010-11 is likely to drop by 14% to 3 million tonne (MT) compared with 3.5 MT imported last year. The drop in this figure is being attributed to the fact that India has recorded bumper crop this season and pulses output figures for 2010-11 season is being estimated to be 17.29 MT, up by 18% compared with 14.66 MT in 2009-10. Of the estimated production tur is expected at 3.2 MT, urad at 1.8 MT and moong at 1.4 MT. Meanwhile, area under pulses increased by 12% to 23.05 million hectares in 2010-11 period.

Director, Indian Institute of Pulses Research (IIPR), Kanpur, N Nadarajan said that a number of factors such as efficient implementation of government programmes on pulses, reasonable minimum support price (MSP), good monsoon, increase in area under pulses, strong technology back-up and timely availability of seeds in the market are attributed to good production.

India is the biggest importer and consumer of pulses and always faces a deficit in demand and production of pulses as its annual pulse consumption in India is estimated at about 19 to 19.5 million metric tonne. Hence, Indian government has initiated various programs to ensure that pulses output by the nation remain robust. In the budget for 2011-12, India Finance Minister had announced Rs 300 crore spending to promote 60,000 pulses villages in rain fed areas for increasing crop productivity and strengthening market linking.

The S&P CNX Nifty opened at 5,766.90; about 17 points higher compared to its previous closing of 5,749.50, and has touched a high and a low of 5,775.25 and 5,719.35 respectively. The index is currently trading at 5,746.20, lower by 3.30 points or 0.06%. There were 24 stocks advancing against 26 declines on the index.

The top gainers of the Nifty were Sun Pharma up by 1.74%, Ranbaxy up by 1.73%, SAIL up by 1.38%, Tata Power up by 1.36% and Dr Reddy up by 1.27%.

Ambuja Cement down by 2.24%, PNB down by 1.78%, IDFC down by 1.65%, Jindal Steel down by 1.51% and Kotak Bank was down by 1.48%, were the major losers on the index.

Asian markets were trading in the positive terrain; Jakarta Composite was up 18.87 points or 0.49% to 3,838.49, Nikkei 225 was up 142.54 points or 1.45% to 9,992.28 and Seoul Composite was up 28.07 points or 1.28% to 2,220.43.

However, stock markets in China, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Singapore and Taiwan remained shut on account of Labor day holiday. While Japanese markets will be closed from Tuesday to Thursday amid Japan's annual Golden Week holiday 

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