Sensex, Nifty volatile; Infosys, SBI, Sesa top gainers

Moneycontrol Bureau

11:30am FII View: The Indian equity market looks like “on the best investments in Asia” right now and UBS is overweight the country, according to Hartmut Issel, the firm’s Head Equity & Credit for Asia Pacific and Chief Investment Officer for Wealth Management.

In an interview with CNBC-TV18, Issel said earnings growth and reforms momentum in the Indian market were two of the key drivers of UBS’ bullishness.

“India has somewhat demanding valuations in the mean time, but I think they can keep it up,” he said.

11:00am Market Check

The market remained rangebound with the Nifty marginally weak near the 8750 level as select FMCG and financial stocks dragged. BSE Midcap and Smallcap indices outperformed by a significant margin today, up 0.7 percent each.

The Sensex fell 41.41 points to 28843.80 and the Nifty declined 12.55 points to 8765.75. About 1448 shares have advanced, 849 shares declined, and 140 shares are unchanged on the BSE.

Asian markets continued their positive momentum, trading higher across the board after China's consumer inflation held steady in March. Brent traded strong near USD 57 per barrel.

Shares of HDFC Bank, ITC, HDFC, TCS, ICICI Bank, Sun Pharma, Tata Motors, Axis Bank and Tata Motors slipped 0.4-1 percent while Infosys, SBI, Sesa Sterlite, BHEL and Tata Power gained 1-1.6 percent.

IDFC gained 2 percent as the company received shareholders' approval for the scheme of arrangement between the company and IDFC Bank. Rajiv Lall, MD & CEO said he expects the bank to begin banking operations on October 1 with a total of 20 branches and the total balance sheet size on October 1 will stand at Rs 70,000 crore.

IndusInd Bank was also in focus. The bank announced acquiring RBS's diamond and jewellery financing business with a loan book size of approximately Rs 4,500 crore. Ramesh Sobti, MD & CEO said the jewellery financing business has been growing at 25-30 percent and will be margin accretive.

Hindalco lost 1.5 percent. Alcoa, the world's third largest aluminium producer, reported numbers in the US with revenues disappointing even as profits topped estimates. JP Morgan said Alcoa's commentary around the auto segment continued to remain positive which highlighted revenue visibility for Hindalco's Novelis unit.