POSITIVE ON BUDGET DAY

Buoyed by firm global cues and positive outlook from the Economic Survey, Indian equity markets have made a gap-up start, prolonging their previous session's rally. Both the key gauges recaptured their crucial 19,250 (Sensex) and 5,800 (Nifty) levels ahead of Union Budget which will be presented by the Finance Minister P Chidambaram later in the day. Investors' have lots of expectations from the governments' last budget before going for election next year. While, every industry after putting their demand is awaiting for some positive outcome from the budget, the finance minister is likely to spell out plans to narrow fiscal and current account deficits as a major priority. Moreover, volumes would remain on the higher side as today is the expiry of February F&O series.

Global cues too supported the sentiments as all the Asian counters were trading higher at this point of time tracking overnight cues from the Wall Street. US stocks had ended higher on Wednesday on upbeat economic data and the Federal Reserve chief's commitment to lose the monetary policy. Back home, on the sectoral front, capital goods witnessed the maximum gain in trade followed by realty and public sector undertaking while, consumer durables, healthcare and fast moving consumer goods remained the few losers on the BSE sectoral space. The broader indices were going neck-to-neck with benchmarks while, the market breadth on the BSE was positive; there were 1,151 shares on the gaining side against 713 shares on the losing side while 77 shares remain unchanged.

The BSE Sensex opened at 19,264.80; about 112 points higher compared to its previous closing of 19,152.41, and has touched a high and a low of 19,322.28 and 19,244.76 respectively.

The index is currently trading at 19,261.77, up by 109.36 points or 0.57%. There were 25 stocks advancing against 5 declines on the index.

The overall market breadth has made a strong start with 58.74% stocks advancing against 36.92% declines. The broader indices were trading in-line with benchmarks; the BSE Mid cap and Small cap indices rose by 0.38% and 0.45% respectively. 

The top gaining sectoral indices on the BSE were, Capital Goods up by 1.41%, Realty up by 1.34%, PSU up by 0.82%, TECk up by 0.80% and IT up by 0.73% while, Consumer Durables down by 0.22%, Health Care down by 0.17% and FMCG down by 0.04% were the losers on the index.

The top gainers on the Sensex were Coal India up by 2.23%, L&T up by 1.79%, Tata Motors up by 1.57%, ONGC up by 1.38% and Wipro up by 1.16%.

On the flip side, Maruti Suzuki was down by 0.98%, Dr Reddys Lab was down by 0.52%, ITC was down by 0.37%, Gail India was down by 0.37% and Tata Steel was down by 0.06% were the top losers on the Sensex.

Meanwhile, in a report, the Finance Ministry has revealed that private banks operating in the country have detected and processed the maximum number of fake currency notes in banking channels surpassing both public sector and foreign banks by a huge margin.

For detecting fake currency notes and send such information to the Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU), all banks (private, public and foreign banks) in the country and similar financial intermediaries are mandated, under anti-money laundering laws and other rules related to national security. FIU is the premier intelligence gathering agency for such instances in the country, under the control of the finance Ministry.

The private banks contributed the maximum number of Counterfeit Currency Reports (CCRs) at 3,10,714, to the FIU during 2011-12, while, the public sector banks detected and sent only 2,649 such reports in the same period. Even foreign banks operating in the country sent 9,273 CCR reports, while the other banking intermediaries sent in 4,746 such reports in 2011-12, surpassing the public banks total volume of CCRs by few thousands.  

The public sector banks, which have the largest base of customers and investors in the country, have become a matter of concerns for the agency prompting immediate remedial measures because of their slow pace and low volume of compliance in this regard. In this regard, the FIU has approached the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) to get better results from public banks in this area of utmost concern. 

The CNX Nifty opened at 5,834.35; about 37 points higher as compared to its previous closing of 5,796.90, and has touched a high and a low of 5,849.90 and 5,820.60 respectively.

The index is currently trading at 5,823.55, up by 26.65 points or 0.46%. There were 37 stocks advancing against 13 declines on the index.

The top gainers of the Nifty were Coal India up by 2.17%, L&T up by 1.86%, ONGC up by 1.51%, Wipro up by 1.29% and Tata Motors up by 1.28%.

On the flip side, Ranbaxy down by 1.38%, BPCL down by 1.34%, Maruti Suzuki down by 0.93%, Dr Reddys Lab down by 0.56% and Lupin down by 0.49%, were the major losers on the index.

All of the Asian equity indices were trading in the green; Shanghai Composite surged 14.21 points or 0.61% to 2,327.43, Hang Seng soared 273.84 points or 1.21% to 22,850.85, Jakarta Composite strengthened 46.15 points or 0.98% to 4,762.56, KLSE Composite rose 2.98 points or 0.18% to 1,627.12, Nikkei 225 zoomed 244.83 points or 2.18% to 11,498.80, Straits Times added 1.88 points or 0.06% to 3,263.00, KOSPI Composite increased 19.54 points or 0.98% to 2,023.58 and Taiwan Weighted was up by 17.08 points or 0.22% to 7,897.98.