The Indian markets after showing some weakness in mid-session made a good bounce back and ended higher by over half a percent in last trade. Today, the momentum is likely to continue with a good start and Nifty may reclaim the crucial levels of 6350. There is likely to be some buzz in the markets and the banking licence aspirants, as the Reserve Bank of India has sought to review the 'fit and proper' criteria for all categories of directors of banks ahead of the grant of new bank licences to corporates. Meanwhile, Oil minister M Veerappa Moily has ordered setting up a panel to assess India’s potential of hydrocarbons resources and refresh the two-decade-old estimate of oil and gas reserves. The panel will estimate the resources of all 3.14 million square kilometres of the 26 sedimentary basins of India and prepare a basin-wise portfolio. There will be some action in textile stocks too, as the government is setting up a $60 billion target for the next financial year, up by over 30% from the current financial year. There will be some buzz in the PSU stocks as well, as the Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs (CCEA) has approved the sale of the Government’s residual stake in Hindustan Zinc.
There will be lots of important result announcements too, Ashok Leyland, Colgate Palmolive, Eclerx Services, Kotak Mahindra Bank, Mcleod Russel, Motilal Oswal, Tata Coffee, Thermax, Torrent Pharma and Zensar Technology will be reporting their numbers.
The US markets remained closed, unable to give any cues to the other global markets, though the Asian markets have made a jubilant start after Chinese central bank injected funds into the financial system, while the Japanese market surged as the yen turned weak ahead of policy makers meet to review monetary policy.
Back home, shrugging off weak global cues, Indian equity benchmarks exhibited a strong performance on Monday and ended the session near the highest level, with frontline gauges garnering gain of over half a percentage point. The up-move was mainly supported by rally in some blue-chip stocks on the back of strong third quarter earnings. Sentiments also remained upbeat on report that FII’s remained on their buying spree and increased their stake in major companies in the December quarter. Earlier, markets made a sluggish opening due to somberness in the public sector oil marketing companies edging lower after Oil Minister M Veerappa Moily announced that the quota of subsidised cooking cylinders will be hiked to 12 from 9 per household. Increasing the limit to 12, which would result in an additional fuel subsidy burden of Rs 3,300 -5,800 crore for the government. Global cues remained choppy with most of the Asian equity indices ending in the red, European markets too traded mostly in the red in early deals. Back home, there was broad based buying witnessed in the markets and apart from the blue chips, the broader markets too equally participated in the rally. Both the benchmarks scaled past to the psychological levels of 21,200 (Sensex) and 6,300 (Nifty). Some support also came in after Reserve Bank of India decided to conduct Open Market Operations by purchasing government securities for an aggregate amount of Rs 10000 crore on January 22 2014, in a bid to ease the strain on liquidity in the banking system. Rally in software and technology counters too supported the sentiments. Stocks like, Wipro, TCS, Infosys, HCL Technologies etc. all edged higher after eight IT exporters reported a combined 37% year-on-year growth in net profit and 27% net sales growth. Finally, the BSE Sensex surged by 141.43 points or 0.67%, to settle at 21205.05, while the CNX Nifty gained 42.30 points or 0.68% to settle at 6,303.95.
