Nifty inches towards 5600; FMCG, autos, oil & gas gain

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Indian equity benchmarks gained strength after a consolidation since yesterday. The Nifty was inching towards the 5600 mark, helped by FMCG, oil & gas, power, metal, capital goods, auto and Anil Dhirubhai Ambani group companies' shares.

Portfolio Manager PN Vijay said the market should end closer to 5,650-5,700 by the end of May with a little bit upward bias - maybe if we get some good news on inflation.

"Market might be listless for a bit more time but knowing the Indian psychic we don't allow things to be listless too long. It may have to breakout one way or the other. The big fear has been inflation. We have lived through that fear right from November at more than 8% inflation. If we get one or two decent inflation numbers and if we had the IMF reaffirming India's growth at 8% yesterday, if we had some dent in inflation with the corporate results practically out of the way, we may see a resumption of the rally we had mid last year," he said.

The 30-share BSE Sensex was trading at 18,659, up 130 points and the 50-share NSE Nifty jumped 34 points to 5,585. The broader indices too were following the same trend - the BSE Midcap & Smallcap indices gained 0.5% each.

ONGC was the leader on Nifty ahead of EGoM meet on May 11, with gaining 2.5%. Government sources told CNBC-TV18 that EGoM will consider LPG & kerosene oil subsidy reform tomorrow.

HUL was the biggest gainer, with rising over 4%. Company is going to demerge its exports business. TCS, L&T, Bharti Airtel, Wipro and Reliance Industries too were supporting the market.

NTPC, ITC, Sterlite and Reliance Communications went up 2-3%. ADAG stocks like Reliance Capital, Reliance Power and Reliance Infrastructure were up more than 1%.

However, HDFC Bank, Infosys, Ranbaxy, Sun Pharma, Ambuja Cements, Axis Bank and ICICI Bank were only losers on Nifty.

SKS Microfinance, Jubilant Foodworks, Coal India, SBI, VIP Industries, HUL and ICICI Bank were the most active shares on exchanges.

In midcap space, Essar Shipping, SKS Microfinance, UB Holdings, Shree Global and PTC India rallied 5-10% while Kwality Dairy plunged 20%. Jubilant Foodworks, KGN Industries, Motilal Oswal and SRF lost 2-5%.

In smallcap space, Rohit Ferro, Kanani Industries, Mastek, IFB Industries and Consolidated Construction gained 6-10%. However, Allied Digital, Kirloskar Brothers, Nitin Fire Protection, Ontrack Systems and Shriram EPC tumbled 5-10%.

Market breadth was in favour of advances - about 760 shares advanced as against 420 shares declined on National Stock Exchange.