Standard gold and ornaments shed Rs 15 each to trade at Rs 16,975 and Rs 16,825 per ten grams, respectively. They have lost a total of Rs 215 in the last five trading sessions.

However, sovereign closed flat at Rs 14,025 per eight-gram piece.

Marketmen said global cues, which guide gold prices in the domestic market, failed to influence the trading sentiment.

The metal in the Asian region advanced 0.5 per cent to USD 1,127.25 an ounce today.

Cooling off of seasonal demand also weakened the trading sentiment for gold, they added.

Silver, on the other hand, recovered sharply by Rs 425 to Rs 27,225 per kg on buying and weekly-based delivery gained Rs 400 to Rs 27,120 per kg.

A firming trend in the Asian region, where silver rose a per cent to USD 17.42 an ounce, also supported the uptrend.

Silver coins also gained Rs 100 at Rs 33,500 for buying and Rs 33,600 for selling of 100 pieces.
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“Investors probably see some silver lining, since there is no borrowing scheduled until the end of March,” said Roy Paul, assistant manager of treasury at Federal Bank in Mumbai. “But concerns about heavy borrowing next year are not going to fade away.”

The yield on the 6.35% note due January 2020 fell 4 basis points to 7.96%, according to the central bank’s trading system. The price rose 0.26, or 26 paise per Rs 100 face amount, to 89.15.

RBI governor D Subbarao said while bonds yields have risen, they are still “reasonable”. “Yields have hardened a little bit,” he said. “We’ll manage the programme in such a way that yields are within reasonable limits and interest rates don’t have a negative impact on the competitiveness of the economy.” Subbarao has kept the RBI’s benchmark reverse repurchase rate at a record-low of 3.25% since April. In January, he raised the proportion of deposits that lenders need to keep as reserves to 5.75% from 5%.
India may expand 8.2% in the 12 months from April 1, compared with an estimated 7.2% this year, the finance ministry forecast last week. Growth averaged 9.5% annually between 2006 and 2008.

The cost of five-year interest-rate swaps, or derivative contracts used to guard against fluctuations in borrowing costs, increased. The rate, a fixed payment made to receive floating rates, fell to 7.03% from 7.05% on Monday.
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“There seems to be further appreciation on the cards. First support will be 45.2600 tomorrow, if that’s taken out then 44.80,” a trader at a foreign bank, who did not wish to be named, said.

Dealers said they expect a good response to the follow-on share sale in state-run NMDC, India’s largest iron ore producer, which runs from March 10 to 12. They said custodian banks were seen selling dollars to participate in the share sale and this move brought the rupee to around 45.42. They later sold dollars on expectations that local shares would advance further.

Foreign fund flows play a crucial role in determining the direction for the local sharemarket and also for the rupee.

Since the middle of February, foreigners have purchased a net $2.6 billion worth of shares. Last year, record inflows of $17.5 billion, had helped the rupee gain 4.7 percent on year.

“I would expect 45.20/10 should hold (on Thursday). Still I am of the same view that rupee gains is somewhat overdone and we may see a correction soon,” said R.K. Gurumurthy, head of treasury at ING Vysya Bank.

Some regional currencies also hit fresh highs boosting sentiment. The Malaysian ringgit hit a 19-month high against the dollar on Wednesday amid expectations of further policy tightening, while gains in the South Korean won and Philippine peso prompted central banks there to intervene.

The BSE ended up 0.27 per cent, helped by small gains in Asia.

One-month offshore non-deliverable forward contracts were quoted at 45.35/45, near the onshore spot rate.

In the currency futures market, the most traded near-month dollar-rupee contracts on the National Stock Exchange were quoted at 45.4525 and at 45.4450 on the MCX-SX, with the total traded volume on the two exchanges at about $6.4 billion.
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The Paris CAC 40 eased 0.03 per cent to 3,908.81 points and in Frankfurt the DAX 30 dipped 0.05 per cent to 5,882.76.
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The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 21.24 points (0.2 percent) to 10,585.62 in initial trades after posting modest gains a day earlier on the one-year anniversary of the start of the market’s rebound from its lows last year.

The Nasdaq composite added 7.31 points (0.31 percent) to 2,347.99 while the broad-market Standard & Poor’s 500 index climbed 3.19 points (0.28 percent) to 1,143.63.

Analysts expect the market to maintain an uptrend as the economy recovers from a deep recession.

“Fundamentally, we have an improving economy going for the market… We believe the market will work higher but probably in a stair-step fashion unless we get some really good economic news,” said Wells Fargo Advisors chief market strategist Al Goldman.

“But, we remain in a bull market and bull markets surprise on the upside as this one has done during the recent pullback and subsequent rally back,” he said.

Briefing.com’s analyst Patrick O’Hare said financials, retailers, and small-capitalized stocks continued to lead in trading, while energy companies lagged behind despite general strength in crude oil prices.

“The market is testing the highs of the bull market run over the past year,” he said.

Wall Street marked the anniversary of the stock market’s 12-year low set on March 9, 2009, amid the financial crisis stemming from a home mortgage meltdown.

Since then, the blue-chip Dow index has rallied more than 60 percent.
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The regulator has banned 118 entities in all, including Pravin Kumar Tayal, the former chairman of BoR, Saurabh Pravin Tayal, Navin Kumar Tayal, Sanjay Kumar Tayal, promoter entities, and persons who it says fronted for them. The SEBI probe followed a reference from RBI which had spotted irregularities during its annual financial inspection of BoR.

According to the SEBI order, the shareholding pattern of BoR showed that the promoters had reduced their stake to 28.61% from 44.17% between June 2007 and December 2009. “On the contrary, they (the promoters) had actually increased their shareholding in a deceptive and fraudulent manner with the active connivance of others. The holding of the promoters (controlled by the Tayal Group) along with their front entities, had actually increased from 44.71% as at quarter-ending June 2007 to 60% as at quarter-ending March 2008 and stood at 55.01% as at quarter-ending December 2009,” said the SEBI order, adding that no disclosures of these acquisitions were made to the stock exchanges.

The promoters and Tayal Group entities had made fund transfers to a string of finance companies which had a common director by the name of Girish Yadav, so that these entities could purchase BoR shares from the open market. Later on, the Yadav group entities made off-market transfers to a chain of Silvassa-based entities, controlled by the promoters of BoR.

“These Silvassa entities are located at addresses that are offices and manufacturing facilities of various other Tayal Group companies. Thus, the Yadav group and Silvassa group were acting in concert with the promoters of BoR to disguise the actual stake of the Tayal Group in BoR,” said the SEBI order.

The order said there was sufficient evidence prima facie to indicate fraud in the dealing of shares by the promoters of Bank of Rajasthan.
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“NMDC has witnessed an impressive growth rate, both in terms of revenue and net profit, over the past few years. The company is the largest iron ore producer in India with access to significant reserves of high-grade iron ore (Fe 64%). Further, its robust margin coupled with the strong domestic and export demand potential of steel augurs well for the company and provides earnings growth visibility in the coming years.

In terms of valuations, the stock is offered at around 35-41x its FY2010 EPS and 16-19x EV/EBIDTA (rough working), which is at a substantial premium to its domestic and global peers. Only part of the premium can be justified by the possibility of further accretion of reserves and the expected robust growth in the production volumes in the coming years,” said.

NMDC has come out with a public issue of 33.22 crore shares. The company will help the government raise Rs 9,967 crore and Rs 11,628 crore at the lower and the upper end of the price band respectively.

This offer for sale of equity shares is Government of India’s decision to divest part of its shareholding in the company. The company is not going to receive any proceeds from this offer.
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On the NSE, the scrip closed at at Rs 139, up Rs 49 or 54.44 per cent . It touched a high of Rs 139.90 and low of Rs 92.80. Around 4.05 crore shares were traded in the counter.

On the BSE, it closed at Rs 137.25, up Rs 47.25 or 52.50 per cent. It touched a high of Rs 140.70 and low of Rs 101.50 on volume of 3.36 crore shares.

TPPL manufactures PVC and HDPE pipes, with a product range including suction & delivery hose pipes, rigid PVC pipes, elastomeric sealing ring fit PVC Pipe (Gasket Pipes), PVC casing & ribbed screen casing pipes, Soil Waste & Rain Water pipes, plumbing pipes, conduit pipes, caping casing strips, column pipes, HDPE plain pipes, sprinkler pipes, etc.

The company will use the proceeds in expansion of its product range by introducing products like CPVC, Drip Inline and DWC pipes. It plans to also set up manufacturing facilities for injection mouldings / fittings and woven sacks. With this, the installed capacity of the company would become 41674 MTPA for PVC pipes.
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Though the response to these schemes has been largely cold so far, domestic mutual funds — mostly with foreign parentage — plan to introduce more such schemes locally in the hope that the exclusivity of these products will lure Indian investors to test their fortune in them. A majority of investments of Indian investors in mutual fund schemes are in domestic equities and debt instruments.

Other such schemes, popularly known as feeder funds, launched this year include DSP BlackRock’s World Energy Fund, World Mining Fund, JP Morgan’s Greater China Fund and Mirae Asset’s China and Global Commodities funds. Benchmark Asset Management also recently launched India’s first international exchange traded fund that captures returns from Hang Seng. HSBC Mutual Fund has sought Sebi’s nod to introduce a scheme that invests in a Brazilian fund.

Industry officials said a large chunk of the investments in these funds is from relatively wealthy investors, mostly from metros.

“The fresh idea that these schemes bring is what attracts investors to them, as India is increasingly being linked to global market. Mutual funds are looking to capitalise on this curiosity factor,” said a top official with a private mutual fund.

According to Morningstar, assets of fund-of-funds that invest overseas stood at Rs 1,395 crore as on February 28, as against Rs 1,170 crore September-end. Mutual fund industry had assets worth about Rs 7.8 lakh crore as on February 28.

Wealth managers feel increased access to various commentaries about the outlook of asset classes has lured investors here to such funds.

“For Indian investors, it is the performance that matters rather than diverse asset allocation. That’s the reason why feeder funds that mirror commodity (including gold) and emerging market assets have been relatively popular,” said Ashish Kehair, head-products & strategy, global private clients, ICICI Securities.

Mr Kehair, however, added that the interest among investors is still far from satisfactory. This is because such schemes are yet to receive the status of an equity fund for favourable taxation purposes and there is lack of awareness about the prospects of these products.
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The 30-share Sensex closed 0.29%, or 50.06 points, lower at 17,052.54, after testing six-month closing highs in the previous session. Nineteen of its components lost ground. “People are a bit cautious now,” said Deven Choksey, managing director and CEO of KR Choksey Shares, a Mumbai-based brokerage.

World stocks inched lower from the previous day’s six-week high as investors grew cautious after a recent rally in riskier assets. The main BSE index is still up 4.9% since the Union Budget announcement on February 26, which pushed for fiscal consolidation and left higher consumption power in the hands of individuals.

Tata Motors closed 3.2% lower at Rs 770.90, as German carmaker Daimler sold all of its 5.34% stake in India’s top vehicle maker to various groups of investors. The stock had declined as much as 5.9% earlier in the day. “Daimler’s decision was a strategic one and does not impact Tata Motors in any way,” said Mr Choksey. “They just held a minority stake and it made sense to exit that.”

RIL, which has the highest weight on the main index, declined 1.5% to Rs 990.20. LyondellBasell filed a restructuring plan on Monday, rejecting a takeover bid from Reliance Industries in favour of commitments from investors, including Apollo Management and Access Industries, to help the chemicals maker exit bankruptcy.

Non-ferrous metals producer Sterlite Industries declined 1.1% as copper prices edged lower. Hindalco and Tata Steel, the world’s eighth-largest steel maker by output, shed 2.6% and 1.3% respectively. IT companies led the gainers on good business momentum, analysts said. TCS gained 1.1%, while Infosys and Wipro rose 0.9% and 0.5% respectively.

In the broader market, decliners outnumbered gainers in the ratio of 1.7:1 on a volume of 454 million shares. The NSE Nifty declined 0.4% to 5,101.50.
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The Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) Sensitive Index dropped 0.3% on Tuesday, mirroring weak global markets, with Reliance Industries (RIL) and Tata Motors leading the decline.

The 30-share Sensex closed 0.29%, or 50.06 points, lower at 17,052.54, after testing six-month closing highs in the previous session. Nineteen of its components lost ground. “People are a bit cautious now,” said Deven Choksey, managing director and CEO of KR Choksey Shares, a Mumbai-based brokerage.

World stocks inched lower from the previous day’s six-week high as investors grew cautious after a recent rally in riskier assets. The main BSE index is still up 4.9% since the Union Budget announcement on February 26, which pushed for fiscal consolidation and left higher consumption power in the hands of individuals.

Tata Motors closed 3.2% lower at Rs 770.90, as German carmaker Daimler sold all of its 5.34% stake in India’s top vehicle maker to various groups of investors. The stock had declined as much as 5.9% earlier in the day. “Daimler’s decision was a strategic one and does not impact Tata Motors in any way,” said Mr Choksey. “They just held a minority stake and it made sense to exit that.”

RIL, which has the highest weight on the main index, declined 1.5% to Rs 990.20. LyondellBasell filed a restructuring plan on Monday, rejecting a takeover bid from Reliance Industries in favour of commitments from investors, including Apollo Management and Access Industries, to help the chemicals maker exit bankruptcy.

Non-ferrous metals producer Sterlite Industries declined 1.1% as copper prices edged lower. Hindalco and Tata Steel, the world’s eighth-largest steel maker by output, shed 2.6% and 1.3% respectively. IT companies led the gainers on good business momentum, analysts said. TCS gained 1.1%, while Infosys and Wipro rose 0.9% and 0.5% respectively.

In the broader market, decliners outnumbered gainers in the ratio of 1.7:1 on a volume of 454 million shares. The NSE Nifty declined 0.4% to 5,101.50.
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