Sensex, Nifty shrugs off Greece downgrade

The Indian markets extended their recent advance into the fifth straight trading session, as healthy global cues coupled with encouraging advance tax numbers from India Inc. offset downgrade of Greece by Moody's. Today the upswing was surprisingly led by the Realty sector. The market opened nearly flat and later went on to slip before rebounding in mid-afternoon trade.



"PSU stocks were in demand after the Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs gave its approval to divest 10% equity of the Coal India and Hindustan Copper", says Amar Ambani, Vice President IIFL Research. Even the Metal stocks, which were badly battered recently, showed some signs of revival, with Tata Steel, Hindalco and Jindal Steel leading from the front. In addition, the FMCG sector continued to attract attention.

The BSE 30-share Sensex gained 75 points to close at 17,413 and NSE Nifty rose 25 points at 5,222.

Markets in Asia ended in the green; the Nikkei in Japan flat, Australia's S&P/ASX also ended flat while the Hang Seng index in Hong Kong marginally added 0.2% higher and Shanghai index in China edged higher by 0.3%.

European indices were trading in the positive terrain, the DAX in Germany was up 0.5%, the CAC 40 index in France was up 0.8% and the FTSE in the UK was up 0.5%.

Among the BSE sectoral indices, BSE Realty index was the top gainer, up 2.6% followed by BSE PSU index, it was up 1.6% and BSE FMCG index up 1.5%. Even the BSE Mid-Cap index and the BSE Small-Cap index added 0.4% and 0.8% respectively.

Outside the frontline indices, the big gainers in the broader market were MMTC, RNRL, Hindustan Copper, REI Agro and TTML. On the other hand, losers included IRB Infra, Chennai Petro, United Phos and Essar Oil.