SOFT START

Indian equity benchmarks have made a soft start following negative Asian cues, as most of the regional peers were trading in the red at this point of time on cautiousness in the global equity markets after the European Union's outlook was cut by Moody's Investors Service ahead of meetings of the region's policy makers. Meanwhile, the US markets remained closed on Monday unable to give any cue to the other global markets. Back home, investors continue to trade cautiously amid lack of progress on policy reforms front. The ongoing spat between the Government and the BJP over the controversial coal block allocations continues to dampen the sentiment. Markets are also reeling under fears of a possible downgrade of India's sovereign debt rating if the expected reforms do not come through in the next few days. On the sectoral front oil and gas witnessed the maximum gain in trade followed by realty and fast moving consumer goods while, software, technology and metal remained the top losers. The broader indices were outperforming benchmarks. The market breadth on the BSE was positive; there were 698 shares on the gaining side against 574 shares on the losing side while 79 shares remained unchanged.

The BSE Sensex opened at 17,378.68; about 6 points lower compared to its previous closing of 17,384.40, and has touched a low of 17,322.20 while high remain its opening. The index is currently trading at 17,341.16, down by 43.24 points or 0.25%. There were 8 stocks advancing against 22 declines on the index.

The overall market breadth has made a positive start with 51.67% stocks advancing against 42.49% declines. The broader indices were outperforming benchmarks; the BSE Mid cap and Small cap indices rose 0.15% and 0.13% respectively.

The top gaining sectoral indices on the BSE were, Oil and Gas up by 0.48%, Realty up by 0.44%, FMCG up by 0.32%, CD up by 0.20% and HC was up by 0.09%. While, IT down by 0.67%, TECk down by 0.58%, Metal down by 0.43%, Power down by 0.41% and Bankex down by 0.27% were the top losers on the index.

The top gainers on the Sensex were RIL up by 0.90%, Tata Motors up by 0.54%, SBI up by 0.33%, ITC up by 0.24% and Hero MotoCorp was up by 0.15%.

On the flip side, NTPC was down by 2.04%, Bajaj Auto was down by 1.02%, Bharti Airtel was down by 0.99%, Tata Power was down by 0.92% and TCS was down by 0.78% were the top losers on the Sensex.

Meanwhile, with ailing performance amid slowing economy, Indian domestic air traffic have posted a decline of 1.1% in July with respect to same month of previous year. International Air Transport Association (IATA) pointed out that the July capacity rose 2.1%, dropping the load factor to 69.6% from 71.8% last year.

The cargo business posted a dip of 3.2% compared to that of previous year and the passenger market demand also pummeled from the month of June to July this year. Though the overall passenger demand is still up 3.4%,  the rising fuel prices is likely to put more pressure on airline growth in the second half of the year.

The airline association noted that the comparison with a relatively strong July last year points a larger decline, albeit the overall trend in air freight is weak, in conjunction with subdued world trade growth. It also added that the global traffic results for July dripped both in air travel and freight, but with considerable variation by region and market.

China's domestic market rebounded sharply from the slowdown earlier this year to post 9% demand growth in July, up from the 7.8% year-over-year growth seen in June. With capacity up 12.1%, load factor slipped to 84.1% from 86.5% last year.

The S&P CNX Nifty opened at 5,249.15; about 4 points lower compared to its previous closing of 5,253.75, and has touched a high and a low of 5,252.30 and 5,235.95 respectively. The index is currently trading at 5,241.55, up by 12.20 points or 0.23%. There were 16 stocks advancing against 34 declines on the index.

The top gainers of the Nifty were RIL up by 1.05%, BPCL up by 0.95%, DLF up by 0.95%, Ranbaxy up by 0.86% and Power Grid up by 0.66%.

On the flip side, NTPC down by 1.75%, IDFC down by 1.52%, Bharti Airtel down by 1.24%, JP Associates down by 1.01% and Ambuja Cement down by 1.99%, were the major losers on the index.

Most of the Asian equity indices were trading in the red; Hang Seng was down by 18.53 points or 0.09% to 19,540.68, Jakarta Composite was lower by 8.20 points or 0.20% to 4,109.75, KLSE Composite was marginally down by 0.70 points or 0.04% 1,653.20, Nikkei 225 lost 7.65 points or 0.09% to 8,776.24, Kospi Composite declined by 0.73 points or 0.04% to 1,911.98 and Taiwan Weighted was down by 0.46 points or 0.01% to 7,450.07.

On the other hand, Shanghai Composite was up by 1.30 points or 0.06% to 2,060.44 and Straits Times was up by 5.78 points or 0.19% to 3,023.00.