Sensex closes 1.1% up for the week

Fri, 18 Jul Closing

   Previous Close   

   Pre-Open   

   09:30 am   

   11:30 am   

   01:30 pm   

After a volatile trading session during the day, the Indian benchmark indices closed the day with a positive bias. Few blue chip companies declaring strong earnings results also provided a boost to the positive market sentiments and the Indian equity markets closed today on a firm note. While stocks from software and banking sectors clocked maximum gains, power and FMCG saw a decline. However, both the BSE mid-cap and the small cap indices lost steam and were down by 0.4% and 0.1% respectively. The BSE Sensex closed higher by 80 points. The NSE-Nifty too was seen up by 24 points.

On the global front, the Asian indices have closed the day on a mixed note. So also, the European indices have witnessed a mixed performance. The rupee was trading at Rs 60.34 to the dollar at the time of writing.

Barring few such as Moser-Baer India, NIIT Ltd and Mphasis Ltd, software stocks today have closed the day on a firm note. Stocks like TCS and HCL Tech have outperformed while leading the pack of gainers. According to a leading daily, Bangalore based Wipro has bagged US $ 1.2 bn outsourcing contract of Canadian energy and utilities firm ATCO. It's a further boost to the company's oil and gas vertical. As per the deal, Wipro is set to buy ATCO I-Tek, the IT subsidiary of ATCO for US $ 195 mn and absorb the 500 employees. Traditionally, Wipro is known to have a stronghold in the energy vertical especially in Europe and this deal provides further momentum to their business in Canada and Australia. This happens to be one of the largest deals for Wipro. Wipro's oil and gas vertical generates revenue over US $ 1 bn of the total revenue base of US $ 7.3 bn. The stock closed 2% higher today.

As per a leading financial daily, the government has resolved to rectify the issues hampering the roll out of Goods and Services Tax (GST) within this year. It also plans to approve the legislative scheme which enables the introduction of GST. Moreover, it has been decided that no decision on GST introduction will be taken without consulting the states. Not just that. The government has also assured the states to compensate them for any revenue loss incurred by them, from the date of introduction of GST, for a period of three years. The concerns over GST primarily pertain to loss of revenue, fiscal autonomy, compensation, keeping certain items out of GST, subsuming of certain taxes in GST etc as cited by the FM.