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Sensex Trades in Green, Inflation in Focus, and Top Stocks in Action
Tue, 16 Apr Pre-Open

On Monday, the Indian share markets settled in the positive territory helped by buying in bluechips such as Tata Motors, TCS, and Coal India rose.

The BSE Sensex rose 139 points to settle at 38,906. Tata Motors emerged as the top gainer on the index with over 7% gains while Infosys ended as the biggest loser.

The Nifty50 index settled at 11,690, up 47 points.

Among BSE sectoral indices, metal stocks rose the most by 2.2%, followed by realty stocks at 1.6%. Tata Motors and TCS were among the top gainers.

Top Stocks in Action Today

Infosys and TCS share prices will likely be in focus today after the IT majors reported their quarterly earnings.

IT behemoths Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) and Infosys reported strong growth for the March quarter, clocking 2.4% and 2.1% sequential rises, respectively, in constant-currency revenue.

The performance underscores strong execution and strong order inflows. Infosys signed large deals of US$1.6 billion, taking the cumulative size of deals won to US$6.3 billion for the full year. This is twice that of FY18.

TCS also did well, bagging contracts of US$6.2 billion last quarter, higher than the US$5.9 billion of deals it secured in the December quarter.

Wholesale Inflation Trending Upwards

According to government data wholesale price-based inflation rose for the second consecutive month to 3.18% in March on costlier food and fuel.

The Wholesale Price Index (WPI) based inflation was at 2.93% in February. It was 2.74% in March 2018.

As per the data, Inflation in food articles hardened with steep rise in prices of vegetables during March 2019.

Vegetables inflation was at 28.13% in March, up from 6.82% in the previous month.

However, inflation in potato cooled substantially to 1.30%, from 23.40% in February.

Inflation in food articles basket was 5.68% during March.

Inflation in 'Fuel and power' category also spiked to 5.41%, from 2.23% in February.

Note that the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has projected retail inflation at 2.9-3%, mainly due to lower food and fuel prices as well as expectation of a normal monsoon for April-September period.

In its latest monetary policy meet, the RBI announced a 25 basis points cut in the short-term lending rate, also known as repo or repurchase rate, in its first bi-monthly rate review of financial year 2019-20.

In 2016, the RBI had adopted an inflation target of 4% (+/-2%) for next five years under the monetary policy framework.

However, since August last year, inflation has stayed below RBI's target of 4%.

Here's what Sarvajeet wrote about it in one of the editions of The 5 Minute WrapUp...

  • In December, CPI-based retail inflation declined to an 18-month low of 2.2%.

    Currently, the RBI's policy stance was 'calibrated tightening'.

    But with the recent inflation data, the MPC may change its monetary stance to 'neutral', even if it does not cut the repo rate.

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