Cement, telecom stocks gain

Stocks hovered with small gains in morning trade. At 10:25 IST, the barometer index, the S&P BSE Sensex, was up 52.09 points or 0.14% at 37,717.89. The Nifty 50 index was up 15.30 points or 0.13% at 11,404.75. Telecom stocks gained. Cement stocks rose. Positive Asian stocks boosted sentiment on the domestic bourses.

Volatility struck bourses in early trade as the key benchmark indices trimmed almost entire gains after a higher start triggered by positive Asian stocks.

The S&P BSE Mid-Cap index was up 0.17%. The S&P BSE Small-Cap index was up 0.43%. Both these indices outperformed the Sensex.

The market breadth, indicating the overall health of the market, was positive. On the BSE, 1184 shares rose and 907 shares fell. A total of 98 shares were unchanged.

Telecom stocks gained. Tata Teleservices (Maharashtra) (up 3.56%), Idea Cellular (up 0.73%), MTNL (up 0.63%) and Reliance Communications (up 0.84%) edged higher. Bharti Airtel (down 1.6%) fell.

Shares of Bharti Infratel rose 0.39%. Bharti Infratel is a provider of tower and related infrastructure and is a unit of Bharti Airtel.

Cement stocks rose. Ambuja Cements (up 0.78%), ACC (up 0.69%), UltraTech Cement (up 0.61%) and Shree Cement (up 0.54%) gained.

Grasim Industries was up 0.85%. Grasim has exposure to the cement sector through its holding in UltraTech Cement.

Patel Engineering surged 14.17% after the company announced that it bagged two hydro projects worth Rs 1793.50 crore and a tunnel project worth Rs 618.21 crore. The announcement was made after market hours yesterday, 7 August 2018.

Overseas, Asian equities were trading higher as investors looked past protectionism tussles and instead focused on U.S. stocks approaching fresh all-time highs. China's trade surplus narrowed to 176.96 billion yuan ($25.91 billion) in July, from a surplus of 261.9 billion yuan the previous month, official data showed Wednesday China's exports in July grew 6% from a year earlier in yuan terms, following a 3.1% increase in June. Imports for July surged 20.9% in yuan terms from a year earlier, compared with a 6% increase in June.

Trade tensions remain in focus after the Trump administration said it will impose 25% tariffs on $16 billion in Chinese imports starting on 23 August 2018. The administration already placed tariffs on $34 billion of Chinese goods last month but delayed on the additional tariffs to hear from US companies.

US stocks closed higher Tuesday as investors continued to brush aside anxiety over the trade war between the US and China and instead focus on positive corporate earnings.

On the economic-data front, the latest report from the Labor Department showed there were 6.66 million job openings at the end of June, up fractionally from May's levels and the third highest in history.

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