Weekly Market Commentary - Feb 17, 2014 - Feb 21, 2014

Markets cheered the vote-on-account. Some investors appreciated the excise duty cuts meant to boost the auto, manufacturing and capital goods sectors, while others celebrated FM meeting his fiscal deficit target of 4.8%. In fact, he has done better and achieved fiscal deficit of 4.6%. Sensex ended the week 300 points up.

However, if we look closely to the vote-on-account statements, we will observe that a lot of accounting talent has been put to use to fudge the numbers to meet the above target. FM postponed the subsidies; recorded revenues in advance; coaxed public sector companies like Coal India and few PSU banks into paying special dividends - harming the interest of their minority shareholders; moved money from one public company to another as in the case of IOC, where ONGC and Oil India will buy stake from govt.

Govt accounting has made Enron look good. Incoming govt will have an uphill task in getting the fiscal house in order.

Sensex ended this week up 1.6%, Nifty was up by 1.8% while CNX Midcap was up by 2.1%.

Monday – Sensex up by 0.5%, Nifty up by 0.4%, Midcap up by 0.1%
Markets recovered their lost ground during the closing as some buying emerged as air around the interim budget cleared. Govt move to reduce excise duty from 12% to 8% for small cars, bikes; from 30% to 24% for SUVs and; from 24% to 20% for mid segment cars came as a huge relief to reeling auto sector. Govt also reduce the excise duty for capital goods and consumer durables by 200 bps to provide a fillip to ailing manufacturing sector. FM’s accounting jugglery to meet fiscal deficit target helped India to escape the danger of rating cut from premier rating agencies.

Tuesday - Sensex up by 0.8%, Nifty up by 0.9%, Midcap up by 0.9%
Markets went up as the optimism from govt move to avoid the populism and provide a boost to certain sectors in the form of excise duty cuts improved the investor confidence. Banking sector stocks led the rally as expectations of turnaround in economy led to rise in expectations of more lending.

Wednesday – Sensex up by 0.4%, Nifty up by 0.4%, Midcap up by 0.6%
Benchmark indices continued to be buoyed by positive sentiment generated by vote-on-account. The gains were mainly on the back of overnight gains in the US market and sustained capital inflows from foreign funds.

Thursday – Sensex down by 0.9%, Nifty down by 1.0%, Midcap down by 0.2%
Market had a pullback as China reported weak manufacturing data and US maintained its stand of tapering of quantitative easing.

Friday – Sensex up by 0.8%, Nifty up by 1.1%, Midcap up by 0.8%
Stocks went up as US factory activity accelerated at its fastest pace in four years in February leading to rise in firming up of all Asian markets.

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