Sensex, Nifty tick higher on Modi-Amit Shah heroics in J&K, yuan pressure still looms

The stock market of India continued to gain post-article 370 scrapping by Modi-Shah duo yesterday. The BSE Sensex gained 139 points to 36,839 levels while 50-stock Nifty went up 42 points to 10,905 levels. Bank Nifty index gained 202 points to 27,850 levels. Chambal Fertiliser, Manpasand Beverage, Bombay Dyeing, Crompton Greaves and SRF stocks were the top gaining stocks while Tube Investments, Jammu & Kashmir Bank, JSW Steel, Cox & King  and CCD stocks were the top losing shares in the intraday trade.

Speaking on the current market scenario Prakash Pandey, Head of Research at Fairwealth Securities said, "The Narendra Modi government's move to scrap article 370 in J&K by proposing the J&K Reorganisation Bill has gone down well among the stock market investors and in coming three-four trade sessions, we can expect around 300-400 points recovery at Nifty. But, before making such recovery Nifty will first make a low and then start scaling as we witnessed post-Pulwama air strikes." He went on to add that market has a cue that post-J&K Reorganisation Bill, the government expenditure in the state defense which is to the tune of around Rs 1 lakh crore would go down and hence the fiscal deficit is expected get under control. However, all depends upon the performance of the Chinese currency's performance in coming days as the Chinese market is a lead indicator for the emerging markets and current US-China standoff is affecting not just China but the entire emerging market including India.

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Hailing Amit Shah and Modi 2.0 Government for the J&K move Rajiv Singh, CEO at Karvy Stock Broking said, "The government has displayed strong political will and decisiveness to take difficult decisions, in order to fulfill one of its poll promises related to J&K. We hope that the government will display similar commitment while acting on the economy to improve both its short term as well as long term prospects. We expect that Government will take similar bold moves in case of addressing economic slowdown, recent taxation measures which have dampened sentiment and go ahead with difficult legislations on land reforms, labour reforms and privatisation of PSUs." He said that while the move on "one nation, one law" has a short term negative impact on the market, there are larger reasons for the decline today.  Asian markets have declined sharply in the morning, largely because of the Chinese currency depreciating past the important mark of 7 to the Dollar, S&P 500 futures imply a 1 per cent decline at the time of writing. However, we believe that the downside is now limited and the Nifty will stay in the range of 10,500 to 11,200 in the near term.

Realty stocks led the bull's morale high as the BSE Realty index went 0.8 per cent higher. Realty major Indiabulls Real Estate share price shot up 4.76 per cent, Sobha stocks added 1.27 per cent while Godrej Properties, DLF, Housing Development & Infrastructure, Oberoi Realty and Prestige Estates Projects stocks gained more than half per cent.

Among the Asian markets, the Japanese Nikkei 225 index crashed 1.4 per cent, South Korean Kospi went down 0.38 per cent, Hang Seng dipped 1.29 per cent while Shanghai markets went off 2.43 per cent.