Sensex up 84 points, Nifty ends flat at 11,935 in choppy trade; Infy, ITC gain

After clocking impressive gains in early trade, benchmark indices ended flat amid volatile trade. Sensex ended at 40,594, up 84 points. Nifty, which had crossed the 12,000 mark earlier in the day, erased most gains to end at 11,931, up a mere 16 points.

This came even as finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman announced a set of measures worth ₹9,675 crore to boost consumer demand by front-loading some expenditure.

An additional budget of ₹25,000 crore will be provided as capital expenditure to develop roads, defence, water supply, urban development and domestically produced capital equipment, to boost economic growth. This will be over and above the ₹4.13 trillion provided for in the Union Budget for 2020-21.

Mid cap and small cap companies were the underperformers in today's trade. IT stocks gained today, while banks and auto stocks closed weak.

On the Sensex, 18 stocks advanced, 11 declined and one was unchanged. Infosys, ITC and Asian Paints were the top gainers, while ONGC, HDFC Bank and Bharti Airtel were the prominent laggards.

Multiplex will open from 15 October in most of the states of India after being shut down for 7 long months. As key regions of movie going audience Mumbai and Delhi is expected to open in November so in the initial few weeks, exhibitors will screen old hit movies. Recently, PVR management said that all the old films will be screened at hugely discounted rates. Although, all new content will be screened at pre covid rates. PVR CEO hopes to be back at pre-Covid levels by the end of the year. We anticipate gradually recovery for the sector. There will be a lot of challenges for the multiplex business for the next couple of weeks. We are bullish on the multiplex stock considering that long term prospects of the business are still promising and stock prices have corrected ~40% due to covid.

Telecom operators are still hopeful of reduction in base price of spectrum for the next auction round even though the Digital Communications Commission (DCC) has cleared cumulative floor price of ₹5.22 lakh crore for the airwaves to be sold, industry body COAI has said.

Asian markets ended mostly higher on Monday with the Shanghai Composite gaining 2.6% and the Hang Seng rising 2.2%. South Korea's Kospi gained 0.5% to 2,403.73. Australia's S&P/ASX 200 gained 0.5%. Japan's Nikkei bucked the trend, losing 0.3%.

The Indian rupee gave up early gains to settle 12 paise lower at 73.28 against the US dollar on Monday

European markets held on to gains with shares in France leading the region.

The Europe Stoxx 600 gained 0.7%, France's CAC 40 is up 0.7% while Germany's DAX is up 0.4% and London's FTSE 100 is up 0.2%.

The Supreme court on Monday issued notice to the Union government on a batch of petitions challenging constitutional validity of the three contentious farm laws passed by Parliament in the monsoon session recently.

As per the petitioners, the farm laws pertaining to agriculture trade are against the constitutional provisions. Agriculture and agricultural trade come exclusive with the State subject and not under Centre, the petitioners said. They also argued that the farm laws are against the fundamental rights guaranteed under the constitution of the country.

Finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Monday said an additional budget of ₹25,000 crore will be provided as capital expenditure to develop roads, defence, water supply, urban development and domestically produced capital equipment, to boost economic growth. This will be in over and above the ₹4.13 trillion provided for in the Union Budget for 2020-21.

"We estimate that the measures announced today for boosting consumer spending and capital expenditure, will boost demand by ₹ 73,000 crore, to be spent by March 31"

Government also revived a special festival advance scheme by paying ₹10,000 in 10 instalments to all central government employees through a prepaid Rupay card which can be utilized for buying items digitally by 31 March. However, cash can’t be withdrawn from ATM using this debit card.

Under the leave travel allowance which will be a boost of ₹5675 crore, central government employees in every four years can travel to any destination or twice to their hometown for which the rail or air fare can be encashed.

With over 90% employees across tech companies working from home due to the pandemic, the Mumbai power outage is likely to impact businesses across the information technology, banking and financial services and fintech sectors.

Mumbai is home to major tech companies like Tata Consultancy Services, Tech Mahindra, Accenture, Capgemini apart from having the largest concentration of data centre facilities in the country.

As promoter group required to increase their holdings to at least 90% for successful delisting, but after the bidding of total 137.78 cores share only 125.47 crores shares are only confirmed by the shareholder, which is less than the required number of shares for successful delisting. As the required number of shares has not been bid so the company can't come up with the Counter offer also. Share of Vedanta ltd will trade on stock exchanges as they were doing in normal course of action. This failed delisting will be negative development or the stock.

Several parts of Mumbai and adjoining suburbs are facing major power outage since 10.00 am.

Worli, Bandra, Andheri, Kandivali, Navi Mumbai and Thane, were among many areas of the Mumbai Metropoitan Region are affected by the outage.

“The electric supply is interrupted due to TATAs incoming electric supply failure. Inconveniences is regretted,” BEST Electricity said in a tweet.

This impacted local trains and various offices in Mumbai.

We have achieved the 12000 target this morning! The next level to watch out for would be 12200-12300. The support is now upgraded to 11750-11800. As long as the Nifty holds these levels, we are in bullish territory and every dip or correction can be utilised to accumulate long positions

The company's arm, Adani Airport Holdings, is in advanced talks with Qatar Investment Authority to sell a minority stake in Mumbai International Airport that it acquired last month.

Rupee opened slightly stronger at 73.11 per dollar. The domestic currency closed at 73.13 against the US dollar on Friday.

Mazagon Dock Shipbuilders made a robust stock markets debut on Monday. The stock was listed at ₹214.90, a 48.2% premium over its issue price of ₹145.

The first government-led IPO of FY21 was subscribed 157.41 times during three-day share sale that commenced on 29 September. The government aimed to sell 15.17% stake in the ₹444 crore issue at a price band of ₹135–145 a piece.

Shares of UTI Asset Management Co. Ltd made a weak stock markets debut on Monday. The stock was listed at ₹500, a 9.7% discount to its issue price of ₹554. The mutual fund company initial public offering (IPO) with a price band of ₹552 -554 apiece was subscribed 2.3 times. The three-day sale, which aims to raise ₹2,160 crore in the upper price band, closes on 1 October.

The company said its delisting offer is deemed to have failed as per terms of delisting regulations. In all 125.47 crore shares were validly tendered by public shareholders. The promoters sought to buy out 169.73 crore shares or 47.67% stake held by the public to delist the firm.