After opening the day on the higher, Indian benchmark indices continued the momentum as the session progressed but ended the day higher.

Indian shares traded slightly higher on Wednesday, driven by Maruti Suzuki India ahead of its quarterly results.

At the closing bell, the BSE Sensex stood higher by 286 points (up 0.4%).

Meanwhile, the NSE Nifty closed higher by 93 points (up 0.4%).

JSW Steel, NTPC, and Asian Paints are among the top gainers today.

Britannia, Grasim Industries, and Reliance Industries, on the other hand, were among the top losers today.

The GIFT Nifty was trading at 25,048, up by 117 points, at the time of writing.

The BSE MidCap index ended 0.9% higher and the BSE SmallCap index ended marginally higher.

Sectoral indices are trading mixed, with stocks in the metal sector, power, and FMCG sector witnessing the most buying. Meanwhile, stocks in the realty sector and telecom sector witnessed selling pressure.

Shares of Info Atul, Pfizer, and CAMS hit their respective 52-week highs today.

The rupee is trading at 83.72 against the US$.

Gold prices for the latest contract on MCX are trading 0.5% higher at Rs 69,524 per 10 grams.

Meanwhile, silver prices were trading 0.7% higher at Rs 83,251 per 1 kg.
 

Why Trent Hit Record High Today

In news from the retailing sector, shares of Trent extended gains for the eighth consecutive session, rising 3.6% to reach a new record high of Rs 5,826 per share on 31 July.

This uptick is driven by expectations that the retail firm will be included in the Nifty 50 index during the September reshuffle.

Over the past eight days, the stock of this Tata-group company has surged more than 12%.

The Nifty 50 index is reviewed twice a year based on six-month data ending 31 January and 30 June. The next index reshuffle will take effect from 30 September.

According to analysts at IDBI Capital, Trent and defense giant Bharat Electronics are expected to replace LTI Mindtree and Divi's Laboratories in the September reshuffle.

As a result of this rejig, inflows into Trent and BEL could be around US$ 429 million (m) and US$ 361 m, respectively, according to media reports. Conversely, LTI Mindtree and Divi's Labs could see outflows of US$ 186 m and US$ 213 m, respectively.

So far this year, shares of Trent have skyrocketed over 89%, significantly outpacing the benchmark Nifty 50 index, which rose by 14% during the same period.

Why BSE Share Price is Rising

Moving on, shares of BSE Limited surged as much as 7% in trade on 31 July, a day after the Securities and Exchanges Board of India (SEBI) proposed some changes to Futures & Options (F&O) trading.

The proposed measures suggested by the markets regulator are the rationalization of options strikes, upfront collection of option premiums from buyers, removal of calendar spreads benefit on expiry, intraday monitoring of position limits, an increase in contract size by nearly 4x, rationalization of weekly index products, and an increase in margin for near contract expiry.

The market regulator stated that these measures aimed to strengthen the index derivatives framework for increased investor protection and market stability.
 

Zee Entertainment Q1 Result

Moving on to news from the media sector, shares of Zee Entertainment Enterprises (ZEE) surged 5.8% to a high of Rs 153.45 in intra-day deals on Wednesday after the media company reported a turnaround in the June quarter (Q1FY25).

The counter saw trades of around 15 lakh shares as against the two-week average volume of around 13.4 lakh shares.

Zee Entertainment, in an exchange filing today, reported a consolidated net profit of Rs 1,181 m for the quarter ended June 2024 as against a net loss of Rs 534.2 m in the corresponding quarter a year ago. The company posted a profit of Rs 13.4 crore in the March quarter (Q4FY24).

Operating income grew by 7.4% year-on-year (YoY) to Rs 21.3 bn in Q1FY25 when compared with Rs 19.8 bn in Q1FY24. Earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization (EBITDA) jumped 75% YoY at Rs 2.7 bn; the margin improved to 12.8% from 7.8% in Q1FY24 and 9.7% in Q4FY24.

ZEE said the soft advertising environment is offset by a pickup in subscription revenue, movie releases and higher syndication revenue.

While Q1 has already started on a positive note with a significant step up in margins, the management expects gradual margin improvement to continue through the rest of the year.

Overall cost discipline and prudence will continue to hold us in good stead. The magnitude of margin improvement will be dependent on Ad revenue pickup in H2FY25. FY25 margins to be meaningfully better than FY24.

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