Sensex, Nifty continue to rise; Coal India, ICICI laggards

Moneycontrol Bureau11:55 am Inflation curbs? Finance Minister Arun Jaitley is meeting his ministry officials, a day after wholesale price inflation in May shot up by 0.79 percent and sent the government scrambling for ways to control it.

Jaitley is also slated to meet key ministers, including Transport Minister Nitin Gadkari, Food Minister Ram Vilas Paswan, Agriculture Minister Radha Mohan Singh and Commerce Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Wednesday.

Steps to check food inflation as well as efforts being taken to boost supply of pulses through its newly-created buffer stock and also from imports are likely to be discussed.

In many states, the price of essential commodities have soared due to insufficient rainfall.

11:45 am Market outlook: Anish Damania, CEO & Head-Institutional Equities, IDFC Securities, is not overly worried about the Brexit vote event impacting Indian equity market. He said the global markets had positioned themselves for the event but it is not visible in India, at least in terms of the VIX and put-call positioning.

Talking to CNBC-TV18 from the broking firm's dealing room, he said IDFC has not seen selling and does not see risk of FIIs pulling out money.

The house is bullish on the market with a target of 8900 on the Nifty. Damania said he is upbeat on financials, capital goods and engineering spaces but bearish on consumer goods and pharma space.

11:30 am Aviation stocks: Shares of aviation stocks are in focus as the Cabinet is likely to take final decision on new and much-awaited civil aviation policy today. Stocks like SpiceJet, Interglobe Aviation and Jet Airways were up 1-3 percent intraday. The Cabinet is expected to take final call on the existing 5/20 rule. The 5/20 rule states that airlines must have completed at least 5 years of flying and have 20 fleets to be allowed to fly international flights.

Released in October 2015, the draft civil aviation policy had proposed three options – keeping the rule, doing away with it or replacing it with a credit-based system.  It had suggested replacement of the 5/20 policy by a 0/20 policy or 20 percent seat capacity, whichever is higher.

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The market is still holding its early gains. The Sensex is up 86.43 points or 0.3 percent at 26482.14, and the Nifty is up 24.55 points or 0.3 percent at 8133.40. About 1459 shares have advanced, 647 shares declined, and 125 shares are unchanged.

Bharti Airtel, Hero MotoCorp, Cipla, SBI and L&T are top gainers while ICICI Bank, Coal India, Dr Reddy's Labs, Axis Bank and HDFC are losers in the Sensex.

Gold futures fell by 0.21 percent to Rs 30,493 per 10 grams today as participants cut their bets amid a weak global trend. Besides, profit-booking by speculators weighed on gold prices. Market analysts attributed the fall in prices to weak trend overseas and profit-booking by speculators at existing higher levels. Gold traded lower 0.10 percent at USD 1,284.20 an ounce in Singapore.