Andrew L D'Cunha

Mumbai, Oct 14: The BSE Sensex managed to closed above the psychological 17,000 Friday at  17083 points, rising 199 points while the Nifty settled at 5,132, advancing 54 points supported by investors buying in index heavyweights Reliance Industries and TCS and  of positive cues from European peers. Technology, oil&gas and FMCG sectors led the upmove while realty, metals and capital goods ended lower.  Sensex touched intraday low of 16828 and high of 17112.

The Nifty touched a high of 5141 and low of 5057 in trade today.  Reliance Industries jumped 2.14%  and  TCS zoomed  3.82% on expectations of  good results after Infosys robust results. Reliance Industries Ltd. (RIL) is scheduled to announce its 2QFY2012 results tomorrow Jindal Steel (4.93%),  Bharti Airtel, Wipro, Bajaj Auto were amongst the  other major Sensex gainers. It was a good week for Indian equities markets with its benchmark indices Nifty and Sensex advanced 5% each.

Inflation for the month of September stood at 9.72% y-o-y, in line with street expectations according to government data, but it remained near double digit levels, raising fears of another 25 rate hike.

Asia markets lost ground on Friday mainly due to the weak performance from  auto makers.Hong Kong’s Hang Seng  ended down 1.4%, China’s Shanghai Composite lost 0.3%, Japan’s Nikkei fell 0.9% and South Korea’s Kospi up 0.9%.

The European markets opened in the red  after S&P downgraded Spain , but recovered soon after. The FTSE, CAC and DAX were up almost 1% each. S&P has cut Spain’s credit rating to AA- yesterday on account of weaker growth outlook for the third time in three years. The country has been witnessing slowdown in growth and also the increasing defaults have put in danger the banks and challenged the efforts to curtail Europe sovereign debt crisis. The rating agency maintains its negative outlook on Spain due to weak economic growth outlook and foresees further fall in the nations’ bank assets leading to higher unemployment levels. Also, Fitch had downgraded Spain’s rating agency to the same level as S&P on October 7, 2011 citing similar reasons.

Trading sentiments for gold turned firm after gold gained in London on concern about Europe's debt crisis and increased domestic demand ahead of Diwali. gold prices rose by Rs 64 to Rs 27,080 per 10 grams in futures market tooday.

Sensex weekly graph:

Andrew L D Cunha, Managing Director, WinWin Fin  Advisory Pvt. Ltd. Mangalore. Email:  finadvisoryltd@yahoo.com.