Sensex, Nifty positive; Apollo Tyres up 4%, banks support

Moneycontrol BureauLive Market Commentary

9:50 am Buzzing: Shares in supermarket chain Trent rose 3.9 percent a day after the foreign investment regulator approved a USD 110 million investment plan by Britain's Tesco.

Tesco this month took the initial steps to becoming the first foreign company to set up a chain of supermarkets in India's USD 500 billion retail sector after announcing it had applied to buy a 50 percent stake in Tata Group's Trent Hypermarket.

9:40 am Update: Royal Dutch Shell Plc and India's Oil and Natural Gas Corp (ONGC) purchased the remaining 35 percent of a Brazilian offshore oil block from their partner, Brazil's state-run Petroleo Brasileiro SA , Shell said in a statement.

Under the accord, which the companies began negotiating in September, Shell will get an additional 23 percent of BC-10, raising its stake to 73 percent. ONGC will get an additional 12 percent, boosting its stake to 27 percent, Shell said.

9:30 am FII view: Pankaj Pandey of ICICI Direct is expecting the Sensex to be around 23000 by December 2014. However, if corporate earnings and economic recovery do not pan out as expected, we will continue to see volatility ridden market next year, he adds. He likes FMCG, autos, private banks, telecom and cement sector. He remains negative on capital intensive sectors like PSU banks, capital goods and infrastructure, power, metals and real estate.

9:20 am Big move: Shares of Apollo Tyres jump over 4 percent on the BSE. The USD 2.5 billion Apollo-Cooper deal collapsed last evening when Cooper alleged a breach of merger agreement by Apollo, while Apollo says it is disappointed that its partner has prematurely attempted to terminate the merger agreement.

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The market has opened in the positive terrain. The Sensex is up 59.50 points at 21202.51, and the Nifty is up 15.05 points at 6306.15. About 303 shares have advanced, 60 shares declined, and 11 shares are unchanged.

ONGC, Axis Bank, Coal India, ICICI Bank and M&M are top gainers in the Sensex. Among major losers are Tata Steel, Heromotocorp and NTPC.

The rupee opened marginally higher by 7 paise at 61.84 per dollar on Tuesday as against previous day's closing value of 61.91 per dollar. The dollar index slipped below the 80 handle, while the euro dollar has spiked to 1.38 levels.

Pramit Brahmbhatt of Alpari India feels the rupee is going to trade rangebound with a slight negative bias today following a weak equity and high dollar demand by oil marketing companies. "However, a strong Euro against the dollar in the international market and dollar selling by state run banks might provide some relief," he adds.

US equity markets ended mixed with the Dow closing on a record high and the S&P 500 on track for its largest yearly increase in 16 years. Meanwhile, European markets ended lower in trade while most of Asian markets will be shut today.

In the currency space, the dollar index has slipped below the 80 handle, while the euro dollar has spiked to 1.38 levels. In commodities,  crude prices are steady this morning following a fall yesterday as data showed that US total fuel demand hit a 26-month high in October while a key Libyan oil export port remained shut.

From precious metals space, gold prices staged a modest rebound this morning after falling more than 1 percent in the previous session, but the precious metal is on track for its biggest annual loss since 1981 as investors shifted their money to equities.