Indian share markets ended their volatile trading day marginally higher today.
At the closing bell, the BSE Sensex stood higher by 44 points.
Meanwhile, the NSE Nifty stood higher by 5 points. The top gainers in NSE today were Tata Motors, Bajaj Finance, and Asian Paints.
SGX Nifty was trading at 11,476, down by 21 points, at the time of writing.
The BSE Mid Cap index ended up by 0.5%. The BSE Small Cap index ended up by 0.1%.
Sectoral indices ended on a mixed note with stocks in the banking sector and finance sector witnessing buying interest.
Asian stock markets ended on a mixed note. As of the most recent closing prices, the Hang Seng was down 0.26% and the Shanghai Composite stood lower by 0.36%. The Nikkei ended up by 1.35%.
The rupee is trading at 74.23 against the US$.
Mortgage lender LIC Housing Finance was among the top stocks to buy.
LIC Housing Finance share price witnessed huge buying interest today after the company declared its June quarter numbers.
The mortgage lender on August 24 reported a 34% year-on-year (YoY) jump in its net profit to Rs 8.1 billion for the quarter ending June helped by lower provisioning. The company's profit after tax stood at Rs 6.1 billion in the April-June quarter of the previous fiscal.
Total income of the company rose to Rs 49.7 billion in April-June 2020 from Rs 48 billion in the year-ago quarter.
The provisioning in the first quarter stood Rs 560 million compared to around Rs 2.5 billion in the year-ago period.
Net interest income (NII) was Rs 12.2 billion, as against Rs 11.8 billion for the same period of the previous year.
Net interest margin (NIM) for the quarter stood at 2.32% as against 2.41% for the same period in the previous year.
Almost 25% of the company's loan book is under moratorium as of June 30, 2020. Individual home loans under moratorium accounted for 16% of the home loan portfolio and nearly 77% of its developer loan book is under moratorium as of June 30, 2020.
Moving on to the news from the commodity space...
Gold prices on MCX continued to witness selling today and were trading down by 0.2% at Rs 51,195 per 10 grams at the time of writing.
Gold had fallen yesterday and tumbled around Rs 1,700 per 10 grams in the last four sessions.
From August 7th highs of about Rs 56,200, gold is down more than Rs 4,300 per 10 grams.
However, prices found support amid fast rising coronavirus cases.
Gains were however capped on weak global cues and rising risk sentiments in the equity markets.
Last week, physical gold dealers in India offered the highest discounts in more than a month and a half, even as more bullion flowed in from abroad, Reuters reported.
Speaking of the precious yellow metal, how lucrative has gold been as a long-term investment in India?
The chart below shows the annual returns on gold over the last 15 years...
As you can see, barring just two years - 2013 and 2015, gold has delivered positive returns in 13 of the last 15 years.
Even with the recent volatility in prices, gold and silver remain among the best performing commodities this year to combat the fallout from the coronavirus pandemic. Earlier this month, gold had hit a record high of Rs 56,191 in Indian markets amid a global rally.
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