Benchmarks trade higher in late morning deals

Indian equity benchmarks were trading higher in late morning deals, led by gains in Oil & Gas, Energy and Auto stocks. Traders took support with Union Agriculture Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan’s statement that the Centre and state governments are working on a new scheme to help farmers transport the farm produce to other states and markets. He added the contribution of the farm sector to the country's GDP is 18 per cent, and the government is working on many areas to further strengthen the sector. Some support also came as the Government of India and the Asian Development Bank (ADB) has signed a $500 million (about Rs 4,250 crore) loan to support green and sustainable infrastructure projects aligned with the country's climate commitments. Sector-wise, insurance industry stocks remained in focus as the Irdai's annual report stated that net incurred claims to net earned premium (claims ratio) of non-life insurance industry stood at 82.52 per cent during 2023-24 as against 82.95 per cent in the preceding fiscal year. On the global front, Asian markets are trading mostly in green as optimism about more interest rate cuts by the U.S. Fed next year aided market sentiment.

The BSE Sensex is currently trading at 78795.43, up by 255.26 points or 0.33% after trading in a range of 78397.79 and 78877.36. There were 24 stocks advancing against 6 stocks declining on the index.

The broader indices were trading in green; the BSE Mid cap index rose 0.34%, while Small cap index was up by 0.50%.

The top gaining sectoral indices on the BSE were Oil & Gas up by 1.35%, Energy up by 1.16%, Auto up by 0.93%, Telecom up by 0.78% and Realty up by 0.72%, while Metal down by 0.74% and Bankex down by 0.07% were the few losing indices on BSE.

The top gainers on the Sensex were Tata Motors up by 2.73%, Mahindra & Mahindra up by 0.96%, TCS up by 0.94%, Nestle up by 0.77% and ITC up by 0.76%. On the flip side, Tata Steel down by 0.85%, Bajaj Finance down by 0.57%, ICICI Bank down by 0.31%, HDFC Bank down by 0.21% and SBI down by 0.02% were the top losers.

Meanwhile, Crisil Ratings in its latest report has said that the Indian data centre industry’s capacity is set to more than double to 2-2.3 GW by fiscal 2027, attributing to increased digitalisation in the economy. Enterprises are increasingly investing in cloud storage. Further, it stated the rising penetration of Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) is expected to drive the demand over the medium term. The rapid advancement of GenAI, which requires higher computational power and low latency than traditional cloud computing functions, will also provide a tailwind to the data centre demand in India.

It asserted that the industry can expect healthy and stable cash flows, which will keep players’ credit profiles steady. A data centre is typically a large group of networked servers used by organizations for the remote storage or distribution of large amounts of data. Data localization plans are expected to trigger investments in data centres, besides incentives by various states to attract such investments.

Data centres cater to the computing and storage infrastructure demand, which is driven by two primary drivers. One, enterprises are rapidly shifting their businesses to digital platforms, including the cloud, a trend that has accelerated post Covid-19 pandemic. Two, increased accessibility of high-speed data has led to a surge in internet usage, including social media, over-the-top (OTT) platforms and digital payments. Besides, it said mobile data traffic logged a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 25 per cent over the last five fiscals. It stood at 24 GB per month at end-fiscal 2024 and is expected to rise to 33-35 GB by fiscal 2026.

The CNX Nifty is currently trading at 23823.55, up by 70.10 points or 0.30% after trading in a range of 23709.65 and 23867.65. There were 35 stocks advancing against 15 stocks declining on the index.

The top gainers on Nifty were Tata Motors up by 2.78%, Adani Enterprises up by 2.24%, BPCL up by 1.52%, Trent up by 1.32% and Mahindra & Mahindra up by 0.99%. On the flip side, JSW Steel down by 0.90%, Tata Steel down by 0.85%, Bajaj Finance down by 0.59%, ICICI Bank down by 0.37% and Hindalco down by 0.26% were the top losers.

Asian markets are trading mostly in green; Taiwan Weighted added 26.18 points or 0.11% to 23,130.72, Hang Seng advanced 215.16 points or 1.07% to 20,098.29, Straits Times rose 17.22 points or 0.46% to 3,769.55 and Shanghai Composite strengthened 27.35 points or 0.82% to 3,378.61. On the flip side, Nikkei 225 slipped 117.67 points or 0.3% to 39,043.67, Jakarta Composite plunged 3.62 points or 0.05% to 7,092.83 and KOSPI dropped 3.31 points or 0.14% to 2,438.70.