Sensex surpasses 52,500; Nifty gains 86 points

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Indian benchmark share indices hit fresh highs in opening trades as Sensex opened at 52,400, up 245 points, while Nifty rose 56 points to open at 15,371.

The Sensex scaled to record high of 52,516 level in early trade. The Nifty also hit a record high of 15,431 level.

ONGC, IndusInd Bank, Kotak Mahindra Bank, Powergrid & SBI gained 2-4.5% in early trades. While Axis Bank, Bajaj Finance, Bajaj Finserv, ICICI Bank & Sun Pharma lost the most on Sensex.

Except for Nifty Pharma, all other Nifty sectoral indices were in the green. Nifty PSU Bank leading with gains of close to 3%.

The S&P BSE Mid-Cap index was up 0.53%. The S&P BSE Small-Cap index was up 0.73%.

The market breadth, indicating the overall health of the market, is strong. On the BSE, 1,340 shares rose and 649 shares fell. A total of 75 shares were unchanged.

On the macro front, India’s exports grew by 6.16% to $27.45 billion in January, according to data by the commerce ministry. Imports too grew by 2% to about $42 billion, leaving a trade deficit of $14.54 billion during the month under review, the data showed.

Results today

Nestle India, Varun Beverages, Schaeffler India, G M Polyplast and R Systems International will be reporting their results today.

Stocks in focus

Wipro rose 1% after the company announced a five-year strategic partnership with Telefónica Germany / O2, a leading provider of mobile telecommunications, broadband and landline in Germany. As a part of this contract, Wipro will work with Telefónica Germany / O2 and its wider ecosystem to transform its Business Support Systems and associated Quality Assurance to enable superior customer experience and growth in the B2B market segment.

Tech Mahindra gained 1.28% after the company announced a strategic partnership with Telefonica Germany / Oz, a leading telecommunications provider from Germany, to drive their end to end IT transformation. Through this digital transformation, Tech Mahindra will support Telefonica Germany / O2 to deliver faster product launches and provide a more ‘human-centred’ experience to its customers in the mass market segment.

Titan Company rose 0.67%. Titan Company was informed by CaratLane Trading (CaratLane), a subsidiary of the company, that it had incorporated a wholly-owned subsidiary namely “StudioC Inc.” in the state of Delaware, USA and accordingly it has become a step-down subsidiary of the company effective 11th February 2021.

SIS surged 5.53% to Rs 449.70. SIS said the company’s board of directors approved the proposal of buyback of upto Rs 99.99 crore worth of equity shares, at a price of Rs 550 per share. The resultant equity shares to be bought back at the buyback offer price are 18,18,181 equity shares, representing 1.24% of the total number of equity shares in the total paid-up equity capital of the Company as on March 31, 2020.

Geojit Financial Services rose 1.67%. Geojit Financial Services, through its Smartfolios platform, has tied up with Lotusdew, a SEBI and US SEC-regulated firm, to offer a basket of stocks that uses behavioural finance and AI to identify dominant market conviction. Through this partnership, Geojit will offer a new small and mid-cap basket of stocks called Lotusdew Prestige, which analyses corporate events like M&A announcements, earnings surprises, order book wins, dividends, stock splits etc. to identify profitable stocks.

Vodafone Idea: Vi plans to fold up its 3G services by FY22 as it bids to move towards becoming 4G-focussed telco in a bid to boost revenue, although it would keep its 2G services running for years given that it has a large segment of basic phone subscribers.

FRL: Future Group has alleged that Amazon had asked for $40 million (around Rs 290.41 crore) in compensation for the deal with Reliance Industries.

PSU Banks in focus as the government to shortlist public sector banks for privatisation

Global markets

Overseas, Asian stocks rose on Tuesday as optimism about the global economic recovery and expectations of low-interest rates drive investments into riskier assets.

The mainland Chinese markets will remain closed for Lunar New Year through Wednesday. The U.S. stock market was closed on Monday for Presidents Day.

On the coronavirus front, the World Health Organization gave emergency use approval to AstraZeneca’s Covid-19 vaccines on Monday, allowing distribution to some of the world’s poorest countries to begin.