Markets remain listless; Bank of Baroda drops 7% Edit

Markets remain listless; Bank of Baroda drops 7%

Benchmark shares indices continued to trade firm led by gains in index heavyweights ITC and Reliance Industries and IT majors.

At 10:30am, the S&P BSE Sensex was up 22 points at 27,797 and the Nifty50 was down 4 points at 8,572. In the broader market, the BSE Midcap and Smallcap indices were trading flat with mixed bias. Market breadth was firm with 1011 advances and 948 declines on the BSE.

ITC was up 1.3% on renewed buying interest while Reliance Industries was up over 1%.

IT majors continued to trade firm with Infosys and TCS were up 0.5%-0.9% each.

On the losing side, Bank of Baroda was down 7% after the state-owned bank reported 60% year-on-year (YoY) drop in net profit at Rs 424 crore for the quarter ended June 30, 2016 (Q1FY17) due to higher provisions and lower net interest income. Further, the bank’s gross net performing assets (NPA) as a percentage of total loans rose to 11.15% at the end of the June 2016 quarter as compared to 9.99% in the March quarter and 4.13% in the June 2015 quarter.

Sun Pharma was down 2% on the back of weak earnings from its overseas subsidiary Taro Pharmaceuticals.(more)

Rajan's exit another sign of PM's unwillingness to change things: Jim Rogers

Rajan's exit another sign of PM's unwillingness to change things: Jim Rogers

The markets regained lost ground on Monday after a knee-jerk reaction to Reserve Bank of India (RBI) Governor Raghuram Rajan’s decision over the weekend to quit after his term ends. Jim Rogers, chairman of Rogers Holdings and author of Street Smarts: Adventures on the Road andin the Markets, tells Puneet Wadhwa that Prime Minister Narendra Modi knows what needs to be done in India, but is reluctant to do it. The markets, he says, may react negatively in the short run, but will go up once the new governor takes charge and prints more money. Edited excerpts:

What is your interpretation of the sudden exit by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) governor?

This is more of the same from Mr Narendra Modi. He always talks of making changes in India, but he doesn't. He has got his own people and he is also putting more of his people in power. He does not like Raghuram Rajan , who recently quit as the central bank head because he was cleaning up the banks and was against crony capitalism. So, Mr Modi knows what needs to be done in India, but is reluctant to do it. Mr Modi ran his election campaign on the platform that he is going to change and save India. Unfortunately, he hasn't done much of that till now. This (Raghuram Rajan's exit) is just another sign of unwillingness of Mr Modi to change things.Read more.

Investors can give rail related stocks a miss: analysts

Rail related stocks have underperformed the market thus far in calendar year 2016 (CY16) with counters such as Hind Rectifiers, Kernex Microsystems, Stone India and Titagarh Wagons skidding around 16% - 22%.

While the market participants are keenly eyeing the Union Budget proposals, analysts say the Railway Budget too assumes significance this time around given that it is being looked upon for its potential to rejig the investment cycle as well as bring transformative change to transportation in India.