GAP DOWN START

Extending its downfall for the fourth day in a row, Indian benchmarks have made a gap down start in the Monday's morning trade tracking weakness in global markets. The US markets slumped on Friday, witnessing their weakest intraday close of the year on getting unexpectedly weak jobs report, the feeble economic news from Europe and China too weighed on the sentiments. Moreover, all the Asian peers too were trading in the negative territory at this point of time, indicating somber investors' sentiment. Back home, Sensex and Nifty lost their crucial 15,800 and 4,800 level respectively, led by selloff in most of the index heavyweight along with broader indices. Meanwhile, state-run oil marketing companies cracked in trade on Monday after they cut retail petrol prices by Rs 2.02 a litre effective from Sunday. The price cut was done following heated protests from the ruling Congress party's key allies, opposition parties and consumers. In addition, Metal stocks were down on worries of a weakening domestic and global demand for metals after disappointing manufacturing data from all parts of the world. Moreover, all the sectoral indices are trading in red zone. BSE Consumer Durables index has tumbled by about two and a half  percent followed by counters like Metal, Software, Capital Goods, Banks, Technology, Realty, Power and Healthcare, all plunging by over 1 percent each. The broader indices too were struggling to get some traction and the market breadth on the BSE was negative; there were 354 shares on the gaining side against 1,049 shares on the losing side while 53 shares remained unchanged. 

The BSE Sensex opened at 15,808.88; about 157 points lower compared to its previous closing of 15,965.16, and has touched a high and a low of 15,831.54 and 15,766.21 respectively.

The index is currently trading at 15,781.63 down by 183.53 points or 1.15%. There was only 1 stock advancing against 29 declines on the index.

The overall market breadth has made a negative start with 24.31% stocks advancing against 72.05% declines. The broader indices too were trading in the red; the BSE Mid cap and Small cap indices declined 1.24% and 0.72% respectively.

The major losing sectoral indices on the BSE were, CD down by 2.41%, Metal down by 1.77%, IT down by 1.46%, CG down by 1.46% and Bankex down by 1.43%, while there were no gainers on the index.

The only gainer on the Sensex was ONGC up by 0.87%. On the flip side, Jindal Steel was down by 2.52%, GAIL was down by 2.39%, SBI was down by 2.32%, Hindalco was down by 2.23% and L&T was down by 2.09% were the top losers on the Sensex.

Meanwhile, the confederation of Indian industry (CII) has demanded that the government should take immediate steps to revive the economy. These demands are coming on the back of the fact that economic growth has slowed down to a nine year low of 6.5%. CII is of the opinion that the slowdown in GDP numbers should serve as a wakeup call for the government and it should announce an 'economic revival package' to put the economy back on the path of growth.

Some of the measures suggested by the chamber are- a cut in the repo as well as the reverse repo rate by at least 100 basis points, speeding up the reform measures in multi-brand retail and civil aviation and bringing in the goods and services tax as early as possible. It has further suggested that the government should also make efforts to reduce the subsidy burden and take steps to incentivize exports.CII is of the view that these steps will not only speed up the economy but will also serve as sentiment boosters.

The CII President Adi Godrej has also suggested that to ease the pressure on the rupee, the RBI should open a temporary special window for importers of certain items, which have an inelastic demand such as crude oil, to meet their foreign exchange requirements. Further green efforts by the industry need to be encouraged by extending 25% weighted tax deduction on expenditure incurred on such initiatives.

It is noteworthy that the Indian economy is now showing clear signs of a slowdown. The growth rate of eight core infrastructure sectors like coal, cement, electricity, oil, and steel has halved to 2.2% in April against 4.2% a year ago. All major financial institutions like JP Morgan, Morgan Stanley, Stanchart and Citi have revised India's economic growth to 5.7- 6.3%, much lesser than the earlier estimates of over 7%.

The S&P CNX Nifty opened at 4,797.30; about 73 points lower compared to its previous closing of 4,841.60, and has touched a high and a low of 4,797.85 and 4,777.10 respectively.

The index is currently trading at 4,778.15, lower by 63.45 points or 1.31%. There were only 2 stocks advancing against 48 declines on the index.

The top gainers of the Nifty were Hero MotoCorp up by 0.62% and BPCL up by 0.49%.

On the flip side, Cairn down by 3.82%, Jindal Steel down by 2.70%, SBI down by 2.57%, DLF down by 2.52% and Hindalco down by 2.49%, were the major losers on the index.

All the Asian counters were trading in the red; Shanghai Composite was down 42.19 points or 1.78% to 2,331.25, Hang Seng was down 439.33 points or 2.37% to 18,119.01, Jakarta Composite was down 111.80 points or 2.94% to 3,687.96, KLSE Composite was down 14.54 points or 0.92% to 1,559.05, Nikkei 225 was down 177.22 points or 2.10% to 8,263.03, Straits Times was down 38.97 points or 1.42% to 2,706.74, KOSPI Composite was down 49.77 points or 2.71% to 1,784.74 and Taiwan Weighted was down by 215.32 points or 3.03% to 6,890.77.