Sensex, Nifty hover tad below the flat line

Key benchmark indices hovered just below the flat line in morning trade. At 10:15 IST, the barometer index, the S&P BSE Sensex, was down 28.16 points or 0.09% at 29,882.06. The Nifty 50 index was down 4.55 points or 0.05% at 9,233.30. The Sensex was trading below the psychologically important 30,000 level which it had hit at the onset of session.

The market sentiment was subdued amid weakness in Asian stocks and lacklustre closing on the Wall Street overnight.

The Sensex lost 92.53 points or 0.3% at the day's low of 29,817.69. It rose 97.26 points or 0.32% at the day's high of 30,007.48, its highest level since 4 March 2015. The Nifty lost 22.45 points or 0.24% at the day's low of 9,215.40. It rose 27.10 points or 0.29% at the day's high of 9,264.95, its record high.

The BSE Mid-Cap index was up 0.37%. The BSE Small-Cap index advanced 0.76%. Both these indices outperformed the Sensex.

Overseas, key Asian stock market indices edged lower amid concerns over North Korea's latest ballistic missile test which landed in the Sea of Japan.

US stock markets closed with small gains yesterday, 4 April 2017, ahead of a key meeting between President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping on Thursday and Friday.

Closer home, the breadth, indicating the overall health of the market, was strong. On the BSE, 1,590 shares rose and 658 shares declined. A total of 108 shares were unchanged.

Among sectors, realty stocks advanced. Unitech (up 7.69%), Prestige Estates Projects (up 6.8%), Indiabulls Real Estate (up 3.67%), DLF (up 1.57%), Godrej Properties (up 1.27%), Oberoi Realty (up 1.11%), HDIL (up 1.03%) and Sobha (up 0.79%) edged higher.

Auto stocks also edged higher. Maruti Suzuki India (up 1.65%), Ashok Leyland (up 1.07%), Eicher Motors (up 0.46%), Tata Motors (up 0.15%) and Hero MotoCorp (up 0.15%) advanced. Bajaj Auto (down 0.01%) edged lower.

Mahindra & Mahindra (M&M) was off 0.53%. The company announced that the total inventory of BS-III Vehicles that the company had before the Supreme Court verdict was worth little over Rs 2000 crore and the company has been able to remove more than half of it at a discount of upto 15%. The company and industry has incurred a loss because of the heavily discounted sale that it had to do on 30 March and 31 March 2017.

The company still has an inventory of about 18,000 BS-III vehicles (two wheelers to trucks). The company may be able to export some of these vehicles which will not incur much of a cost; and convert some of these vehicles to BS-IV, which will have a cost of as little as Rs 3,000-4,000 for some of the small commercial vehicles to as much as Rs 2 lakh for HCVs. Some of the vehicles can neither be exported nor converted to BS-IV. The announcement was made after market hours on Monday, 3 April 2017.

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