After opening in green, the Indian Indices are still going strong with Sensex and Nifty reaching new record highs. Maximum buying interest is seen in Engineering and Healthcare stocks.
The BSE-Sensex is trading up 109 points and the NSE-Nifty is trading up 26 points. The BSE Mid Cap index is trading up 0.5% and the BSE Small Cap index is trading up 0.6%. The rupee is trading at 61.10 to the US dollar.
It appears that the slowdown in the economy as well as the decontrol of petroleum products has had an effect on demand for fuel. India's fuel demand has risen by its slowest pace in the last 12 years. The total petroleum products demand has grown by just 0.7% YoY in FY14 to 158.197 m tonnes. This is the slowest growth seen since FY02. The main culprit was diesel which recorded a drop in consumption by 1% YoY largely due to the steady price increases. In Fy13 diesel demand had risen by 6.7% YoY. Diesel rates have increased by Rs 8.3 since Jan 2013. Even though petrol prices have been fully decontrolled, the current selling price of diesel still is about Rs 5.5 per litre lower than its production cost.
Automobile stocks are trading mixed today. Hero Motor Corp. and Force Motors are leading the gainers. Maharashtra Scooters and Tata Motors are leading the losers. According to a leading business daily, Maruti Suzuki has lost its second position in the car exports to Nissan Motors India. Nissan has moved ahead of Maruti Suzuki in terms of export numbers as its current models Mirca and the Sunny sedan has surpassed sales numbers of Maruti's top sellers like A-Star, Alto and Dzire. Nissan exported 1.16 lakh units in FY14 while Maruti's exports were restricted to 1.01 lakh cars. Hyundai Motor India retained its top slot by shipping 2.33 lakh cars in the last fiscal year. Maruti's biggest market so far has been Europe but now it would be concentrating on Middle East, Africa and the South East Asian markets for exports. The company has already started producing the left hand drive variants of its popular models like Swift, Dzire and Ertiga MPV to tap the new geographies. Maruti Suzuki is trading flat today.
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