Markets log biggest gain in six months
IN FAVOUR Sensex recoups some losses from last week’s carnage
MUMBAI: Benchmark equity indices Sensex and Nifty logged their biggest gains in more than six months on Wednesday, recouping some losses from last week’s carnage.
Investors opted for short-covering and value buying, betting there may be no contagion risk from serial defaults at Infrastructure Leasing & Financial Services Ltd.
BSE’S 30-share Sensex rose 1.35% or 461.42 points to 34,760.89, while National Stock Exchange’s 50-share Nifty climbed 1.54% or 159.05 points to close at 10,460.10 points.
It was the biggest gain for both indices since 5 April. Since the start of last week through Tuesday, the Sensex has lost 5.32% or 1927.67 points. Nilesh Shah, managing director of Kotak Mahindra Asset Management Co. Ltd, attributed Wednesday’s recovery to some bottom-fishing.
“Government has soothed investor sentiment and confidence is boosted that there will be no contagion from the IL&FS crisis,” Shah said.
“SBI (State Bank of India) increasing the securitization target, NHB (National Housing Bank) increasing the refinance limit (and) such liquidity enhancing measures are assuring that there will be no systemic liquidity crisis,” Shah added.
SBI on Tuesday said it will triple its target of buying standard loans from non-banking financial companies (NBFCS) to up to ₹45,000 crore in FY19.
NHB has increased the refinancing limit to ₹30,000 crore from the existing limit of ₹24,000 crore in order to address the liquidity crisis in the housing finance industry, which would, in turn, increase the availability of funds for housing finance companies.
These steps boosted NBFC stocks. Dewan Housing Finance Corporation Ltd jumped 16.08% and Edelweiss Financial Services Ltd nearly 10%, while Indiabulls Housing Finance Ltd rose 3.61%. “Things are fine as of now. Valuation-wise, we are in the fair value zone. For many stocks across large and small cap, we are trading below 10-year historical average on price to book basis,” said Shah.
“Oil and election will be a bigger influencer for the market going forward,” he added.
The underlying tone, however, was cautious.
“We maintain our cautious view on the Indian markets in the near term, as volatility is likely to remain high,” said Jayant Manglik, president, Religare Broking Ltd.
Foreign institutional investors (FIIS) have sold a net of $3.5 billion of shares in the year so far, while domestic institutional investors (DIIS) have bought a net of ₹91,064.32 crore of Indian equities in the same period.
“Focus of market participants would shift to the corporate earnings season and domestic macro data like IIP (index of industrial production) and CPI (consumer price index)/wpi (wholesale price index) inflation which are scheduled over next 1-2 weeks, as it would dictate the further course of markets,” added Manglik. Financials contributed the most to the gains for Sensex. Private lenders ICICI Bank Ltd and Axis Bank Ltd gained 4.18% and 6.62% respectively, while SBI rose 5.88%. NEW DELHI: After the Supreme Court barred telecom operators from using Aadhaar to validate identity of mobile subscribers, the Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI) has suggested several alternative measures to the government to prevent a return to the days of paper-based identity verification.
These include entering various fields in the customer acquisition form electronically on the operator’s app, capturing GPS coordinates while capturing the customer’s live photo at the point of sale of the mobile connection, watermarking the photo and assigning a unique operator code so that the photo cannot be copied or re-used.
As additional safeguard, the system will also verify that the geotag of the customer’s picture and final submission of request by the point of sale is not more than 50 metres away, the letter added.
In a letter addressed to telecom secretary Aruna Sundararajan, the lobby group said that after the court verdict on Aadhaar and instructions received by Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI), a return to paper-based process should not be an option as it would reverse the steps taken by the industry towards Digital India and result in wastage of infrastructure and investment.
“Any move back to paperbased system at such scale and such large reach will take years and will also adversely impact broadband and telecom growth, more so in villages and remote corners of the country,” the letter by COAI dated 5 October said. Mint has seen a copy of the letter.
This comes after the UIDAI on 1 October asked operators to submit by 15 October a plan to
UIDAI ASKED TELCOS TO SUBMIT BY 15 OCT A PLAN TO WIND UP THEIR AADHAARBASED AUTHENTICATION SYSTEMS
wind up their Aadhaar-based authentication systems in line with the court order last month. Until now, telephone companies had been pushing customers to link their numbers with Aadhaar.
Aadhaar-based real-time electronic KYC (know-yourcustomer) process to issue mobile connections was much faster compared with physical verification that used to take almost a week.
“We are proposing minor modifications to the DOT guidelines dated 24 August, 2015 allowing the customer acquisition form to be embedded with photograph and scanned images thereby digitise the end to end process for onboarding of new subscribers by making it paperless,” the letter said, urging the department of telecommunication to roll out this process formally at the earliest so that customers are not inconvenienced due to closure of Aadhaar-based EKYC.
The DOT has so far not issued any formal instruction to telecom operators on how to proceed with customer acquisition even as UIDAI’S 15 October deadline approaches.