सेंसेक्‍स में मामूली बढ़त देखने को मि‍ली है, वहीं सोने के भाव कम हुए हैं...पढ़ें पूरी खबर

देश के शेयर बाजारों में गुरुवार को तेजी देखी गई.बीएसई का 30 शेयरों वाला प्रमुख सूचकांक सेंसेक्स 23.65 अंकों की तेजी के साथ 20,272.91 अंक और एनएसई का 50 शेयरों वाला निफ्टी 13.50 अंकों की तेजी के साथ 6,020.95 के स्‍तर पर बंद हुआ.

गुरुवार को सबसे ज्‍यादा तेजी ऑटो सेक्‍टर में देखने को मि‍ली. कुछ बैंकों द्वारा ऑटो लोन के लि‍ए ब्‍याज दरों में कमी और फे‍स्‍ि‍टव सीजन को देखते हुए चालू ति‍माही के दौरान ऑटो सेक्‍टर की कंपि‍नयों का मुनाफा बेहतर रहने के अनुमान की वजह से नि‍वेशक ऑटो शेयरों का रुख कर रहे हैं. ऑटो कंपि‍नयों के बेहतर रि‍जल्‍ट की संभावना से ऑटो सेक्‍टर के शेयरों में आगे भी तेजी देखी जा सकती है.
सोना फीका
सोने की कीमतों में गुरुवार को कमी देखने को मिली.गुरुवार शाम प्रति दस ग्राम सोने की कीमत 156 रुपये की कमी के साथ्‍ा 29,147 रुपये थी. हालांकि फेस्टिव सीजन के खत्‍म होने तक सोने की कीमतों में कोई बड़ी गिरावट आने की संभावना बेहद ही कम है.
रुपया मजबूत
गुरुवार को डॉलर के मुकाबले रुपये में मजबूती देखी गई है. गुरुवार शाम एक डॉलर की कीमत 12 पैसे की मजबूती की साथ्‍ा 62.04 रुपये रही. रुपये में आई मजबूती की वजह सितंबर में निर्यात में आई वृद्धि और आयात में आई कमी बताई जा रही है.सि‍तंबर में नि‍र्यात में 11.15 फीसदी की तेजी देखी गई.

Sensex crosses 20,000, bank stocks on fire

Indian stock markets rose sharply in early trade, led by gains in banking stocks after the RBI cut a key rate yesterday.

The Sensex was up 194 points at 20,089.84 while Nifty rose 61 points at 5,967.

The index for banking stocks, Bank Nifty, rose over 3 percent. Among on the banking stocks, Yes Bank surged 7.2 percent while IndusInd Bank rose 6.6 percent. Other banking stocks that saw strong buying activity were Axis Bank, Kotak Mahindra Bank and ICICI Bank, each up over 3 percent.

Despite today's surge analysts remain cautious on the market ahead of the earnings season. Infosys kicks off the September earnings season when it announces its results this Friday. The Nifty is likely to see pressure near the 6000 levels, said Gaurang Shah, vice president at Geojit BNP Paribas Financial Services.

The Reserve Bank of India yesterday cut a key overnight interest rate, further dialling back an emergency measure it had imposed in mid-July in order to defend the embattled rupee that had tightened market liquidity and pushed up borrowing costs.

The move to cut the marginal standing facility (MSF) rate by 50 basis points to 9.0 percent was the latest by new Reserve Bank of India (RBI) Governor Raghuram Rajan to return monetary policy settings towards normal after a harrowing run for the rupee that saw it drop as much as 20 percent on the year as of late August.

Asian markets were mixed over the continuing deadlock in the US. On the Wall Street, the Dow Jones fell to near its month low yesterday.

Rupee may slide to 68/dollar if US defaults on October 18

The Indian rupee could slide all the way to 68 per dollar if US lawmakers do not reach a deal to increase the debt ceiling, a report by Bank of America Merrill Lynch said on Monday.

The US has until October 17 to raise its $16.7 trillion debt limit after which the world's biggest economy will default on its obligations triggering a financial crisis and recession that would echo the events of 2008 or worse, analysts said.

Indranil Sen Gupta and Abhishek Gupta said such a default could lead to a Lehman-type global collapse. A default by the US would also slash about 80 basis points from India's GDP, which means that growth in fiscal year 2013-14 could be as low as 3.8 per cent, according to BofA-ML forecast.

"This assumes that the global shock would pull export growth down to zero," the two economists said.

The scary forecast put Indian equities and currency under pressure on Monday. The BSE Sensex traded around 220 points lower at 19,697 as of 10.31 a.m., while the broader Nifty fell around 70 points to 5,839. The rupee slumped 0.62 per cent to 61.81 per dollar.

"A default would be unprecedented and has the potential to be catastrophic," a US Treasury report said. "Credit markets could freeze, the value of the dollar could plummet, U.S. interest rates could skyrocket, the negative spillovers could reverberate around the world."

Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody's Analytics said a debt default would be a "cataclysmic" event that would roil financial markets in the United States and around the world.

Mr Zandi said that holders of US Treasury bonds would demand higher interest rates which would cost the country hundreds of billions of dollars in higher interest payments in coming years on the national debt.

Most analysts are still hopeful of a resolution and that explains why equity markets across the globe are holding up.

"Political brinkmanship has led the federal government to partially shut down, but we expect an agreement to be reached before the debt ceiling becomes binding," global brokerage Nomura said in a report.

C Jayaram of Kotak Mahindra Bank told NDTV that a default is "extremely unlikely scenario."

"The current shutdown is more about fragile egos... This will get resolved sooner or later and is unlikely to lead to an alarming situation," he added.

Should I invest in gold and silver? What experts say

London: Gold prices, which have fallen more than 20 percent this year, are expected to have rebounded to $1,405 an ounce by November 2014, delegates to the London Bullion Market Association's annual conference forecast on Tuesday.

Silver, this year's biggest faller with a 30 percent drop, is also forecast to rise to $25 by November next year. Platinum prices are expected to stand at $1,675 an ounce, and palladium at $837 an ounce.

Gold has dropped this year on the back of expectations that a steadier macroeconomic environment will lead the Federal Reserve to curb its bullion-friendly stimulus measures and boost other assets like stocks at gold's expense.

But with the global financial system digesting years of stimulus measures, which some analysts believe could still prove inflationary, and the recovery in global markets yet to prove itself robust, gold prospects are for recovery, delegates said.

"I think gold will likely respond to how the asset classes it competes with are doing. This year's been a phenomenal year for equities," Shayne McGuire, head of internal research and the portfolio manager for the gold fund at Teacher Retirement System of Texas, said.

"If you look at things you can potentially sell to buy equities, gold is often a natural contender. When equities are falling sharply, gold tends to do better, but the inverse can also be true, which is why it has been a natural difersifier for equity-heavy diversified portfolios."

"I believe that if equities are going to take a breather, that perhaps gold could do well."

A drop in investment interest in Western markets this year, shown by a fall in holdings of gold-backed exchange-traded funds, has placed increasing focus on the major centres of demand for physical bullion, China and India.

Demand for physical gold across the world shot higher in April after spot prices slid $200 an ounce in just two days, their sharpest such slide in 30 years.

"This year marks the shifting of Western-centric paper market to Eastern-centric physical market, with India and China accounting for 80 of physical demand from 46 percent previously," Sharps Pixley CEO Ross Norman said.

"We've seen, through our own business out in Asia, that our turnover has doubled in the Asian time zone over the last year," Jeremy East, global head of metals trading at Standard Chartered, said.

ASIA TO THE FORE

China is expected to overtake India this year as the world's number one gold consumer. Rising wealth among its growing middle class has led gold demand to mushroom in recent years.

"With the affluence of the people growing by the day, I think there's still a long way to go before you can see you've reached saturation (in China)," Victor Chow, managing director of Hong Kong jeweller Chow Sang Sang told Reuters at the conference.

"In the first half we had 60 percent (sales growth) overall compared to last year, because of the April gold rush," he said. "In the third quarter, that has tailed off, but we're still seeing healthy figures compared to last year."

India saw record imports in May after the price slide, but it has since been hit by a raft of new regulations aimed at curbing bullion imports, a major driver of its record high current account deficit. That could push imports down significantly from last year's 850 tonnes.

Import duty has been hiked for 10 percent, or 15 percent in the cast of jewellery, while new regulations state that 20 percent of imported gold must be re-exported.

Delegates were sanguine about the need to target gold imports - bullion is the largest non-essential import into India - but said meeting the terms of the new regulations would be a tough call.

"With the increase in duty, demand is hardly affected," Shekhar Bhandari, executive vice president at Kotak Mahindra baqnk, said at the conference. "Gold does become costly, but its price is more affected by spot prices and the price of the rupee."

For jewellers to abide by the 80/20 rule, exports are going to have to pick up significantly, delegates said.

Indian jewellers at the conference say they are keen to meet the challenge, but plans to expand export capacity has been hurt by a drop in domestic supply, and they face tough competition from other producers like Thailand.