India's Sensex swings 800 points up and down on budget day (Roundup)

A volatile trading session in Indian stock markets marked the presentation of Narendra Modi government's maiden budget Thursday with a key index registering a massive swing of 800 points before ending in the red with a loss of nearly 75 points, or some 0.25 percent.

The sensitive index (Sensex) of the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) opened higher ahead of the start of the budget presentation by Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, at 25,513.74 points, compared with the previous day's close at 25,444.81 points.

It subsequently fell to 25,117 points. It was only after Jaitley started unveiling his taxation proposals, which included some excise and customs duty rationalisation and a hike in direct tax exemption rate for individuals that the index started inching up.

During this upward run, the Sensex managed to scale 25,920.46 points, which amounted to a gain of nearly 2 percent over the previous day's close. Eventually, the gains could not be sustained, resulting in the index closing at 25372.75 points.

But the closing data of the key index did not indicate the broader market. Among the 12 industry-specific indices of the exchange, as many as 7 of them ended in the green Thursday, especially that for the realty sector, while five of them, led by the index for consumer durables, closed with lossses.

The market movement also did not reflect the general sentiment of investors on Jaitley's maiden budget, which appeared positive. "All-in-all, we think this a pro-growth and responsible budget, which is positive for the economy and markets in the medium-to-long term," said Dipen Shah of Kotak Securities.

Industry too welcomed the budget which envisages aspects like tax emptions on infrastructure loans and Rs.10,000 crore SME (small and medium enterprise) fund.

"The biggest positives have been containing fiscal deficit and GST (goods and service tax) implementation time frame," said Ashishkumar Chauhan, managing director and chief executive, BSE.

Chauhan noted that the budget proposals like tax holiday extension for power plants and Rs.10,000 crore SME (small and medium enterprise) fund will spur growth.

"The hangover of retrospective tax prevailed and in the later part of session, we saw again huge sell off eroding the entire gains made by Nifty. Overall, the market was very volatile and the investors are still trying to understand the fine prints of budgetary provisions and we expect the market to remain volatile even tomorrow," said D.K. Aggarwal, chairman and managing director, SMC Investments and Advisors Limited.

The total investments by foreign funds was also not particularly high and were valued at $236 million. It was way below the $1.2 billion on July 4 and the lowest single-day investment in the current month.

In Thursday's trade, heavy selling pressure was observed in consumer durables, auto and banking stocks, even as the scrips of metals, realty and capital goods companies stocks gained.

The top five gainers on the Mumbai exchange were DLF, up 9.22 percent, IDFC, up 8.99

percent, Prestige Estates, up 6.86 percent, REC, up 5.92 percent and HDIL, up 5.25 percent. Bharat Electronics led the losers, down, 6.10 percent, followed by Titan, 5.76 percent, Gitanjali Gems down 5.73 percent, Hero MotoCorp, down 3.99 percent and Apollo Tyres, down 3.80 percent.

at a broader level, among the 2,965 scrips that traded on the exchange, 1,649 ended with gains, 1,229 closed with losses, while 87 others remained unchanged.