HOLDING THE GAINS

Indian benchmarks have gained about half a percent in the late morning session on fresh buying by funds and retail investors. Sentiments got some support from positive global cues. Overnight, the Dow came within 40 points of an all-time high, while Chinese markets rebounded after a sharp selloff on Monday. On the global front, Asian shares rebounded strongly on Tuesday after a sharp sell-off triggered by slumping Chinese stocks the previous session, as a globally accommodative monetary stance helped revive risk appetite.

Back home, the traders were seen piling up positions in Realty, Auto and IT, while selling was seen in Consumer Durables sectors. In scrip specific actions, Tata Motors rose after the company slashed prices of passenger cars.GMR Infrastructure surged after the company stated that it will divest its 70% stake in GMR Energy (Singapore) to FPM Power for 660 million Singapore dollars. Natco Pharma soared after company won cancer drug cast against multinational pharma major Bayer Corporation. Essar Oil jumped after the ministry of environment and forests granted the phase-III clearance for the company's Raniganj block in West Bengal, allowing it to increase drilling to 650 wells. Reliance Industries gained after the Defence Ministry agreed to relax the "No-Go" zones imposed on its producing KG-D6 gas block and gas discovery block of NEC-25 in Bay of Bengal and permitted oil and gas activities. Two-wheeler maker Bajaj Auto extended losses on the back of weak sales in February 2013.

Meanwhile, the NSE Nifty and BSE Sensex were trading near their psychological 5700 and 18900 levels respectively. The market breadth on BSE was showing positive trend with advances to declines in ratio of 1227:834.

The BSE Sensex is currently trading at 18999.74, up by 121.78 points or 0.65% after trading in a range of 19035.60 and 18943.62. There were 21 stocks advancing against 9 declines on the index.

The broader indices were trading in green; the BSE Mid cap index was up by 0.75% and Small cap index was up by 0.42%.

The top gaining sectoral indices on the BSE were, Realty up by 1.19%, Auto up by 1.17%,  IT up by 1.17%, Oil & Gas up by 0.91% and TECk up by 0.79% while, Consumer Durables down by 0.24% were only the  top loser on the BSE.

The top gainers on the Sensex were Tata Motors up by 3.17%, ICICI Bank up by 2.27%, Maruti Suzuki up by 2.00%,RIL up by 1.74% and Wipro up by 1.38%.

On the flip side, Bajaj Auto was down by 1.40%, Bharti Airtel was down by 0.94%, NTPC was down by 0.60%, ONGC was down by 0.51% and ITC was down by 0.34% were the top losers on the Sensex.

Meanwhile, In order to restart the economic growth engine, Finance Minister P Chidambaram on March 4 said that finance ministry will monitor the investment plans every quarter of those public and private sector entities that have huge cash surplus. He said that the whole exercise is aimed at re-starting the growth engine, adding that the economy will grow by over 6 per cent in the next financial year and even higher in the subsequent years.

The Finance Ministry has already issued letters to the PSUs asking them to submit their investment plans for the next financial year. Chidambaram said that the entities would be asked to pay special dividend if they failed to execute investment plans. 

Defending himself and the Government about the recent state of the economy, he said that things started worsening after the global crisis in 2008 and expressed the need to contain the fiscal as well as current account deficit of the country. On the absence of any 'big bang' announcements in the budget, he said that big bang interests only the media, but people want small, critical steps that will restart the growth engine.

The CNX Nifty is currently trading at 5,732.40 up by 33.90 points or 0.59% after trading in a range of 5,742.35 and 5,722.40. There were 34 stocks advancing against 16 declines on the index. The top gainers of the Nifty were Tata Motors up by 3.49%, ICICI Bank up by 2.28%, JP Associates up by 2.27%, HCL Tech up by 2.14%, and Ultra Cement up by 1.82%.

On the flip side, Bajaj-Auto down by 1.63%, Bharti Airtel down by 1.12%, Power Grid down by 1.11%, Ranbaxy down by 0.71% and ACC down by 0.67%, were the major losers on the index.

Most of the Asian equity indices were trading in the green; Shanghai Composite surged 25.11 points or 1.10% to 2,298.52, Hang Seng rose 51.11 points or 0.23% to 22,588.92, KLSE Composite jumped 5.59 points or 0.34% to 1,641.57, Nikkei 225 increased 57.11 points or 0.49% to 11,709.40, Straits Times added 10.34 points or 0.31% to 3,249.18, KOSPI Composite moved up 10.49 points or 0.52% to 2,023.17 and Taiwan Weighted was up by 68.42 points or 0.86% to 7,935.02.

On the flip side, Jakarta Composite was down by 2.47 points or 0.05% to 4,758.99.