Sensex, Nifty surge 2%; Bajaj Auto up 3% post Q3 results

1:50 pm Bullish stance: Shares of Maruti Suzuki hit record high at Rs 3616.40, up 3 percent intraday. Bank of America Merrill Lynch has raised target price on the auto major to Rs 4100 per share, indicating a 9 percent upside. The brokerage expects Maruti to register 34 percent earnings per share (EPS) CAGR despite lowering earnings forecasts by 6 percent in FY16 and 2 percent in FY17.

"The target price is still premium over past trends due to superior growth on much larger addressable opportunity (including UVs, LCVs) and higher return ratios on account of more liberal dividend payout policy," says the brokerage. It also further adds that that four-wheeler manufacturer will continue gaining share due to better franchise, extensive reach and launches, including foray in segments absent so far.

1:30 pm  Buzzing: Shares of PC Jeweller rallied 10.7 percent intraday after the government allowed the company to directly import precious metals for domestic business. The move would help the company to reduce its cost to buy precious metals, PC Jeweller Managing Director Balram Garg said. In a filing to the BSE, PC Jeweller informed that the "company, has been designated as Nominated Agency under Paragraph 4A.4 of Foreign Trade Policy 2009-14 (RE-2012), by the Additional Director General of Foreign Trade (CLA), Ministry of Commerce & Industry, Department of Commerce."

"This permission makes the company eligible for direct import of precious metals (gold/silver/platinum) for domestic business," it added.

1:20 pm Earnings: Bajaj Auto's net profit fell 4.8 percent year-on-year to Rs 861.2 crore on revenue of Rs 5,657 crore for the quarter ended December 2014. Profit of the two-wheeler maker was supported by better operational performance but was impacted by lower other income.

However, numbers were ahead of street expectations. According to the average of estimates of analysts polled profit was expected at Rs 850 crore on total income of Rs 5,591 crore for the quarter.

Total income from operations during the quarter grew by 10.3 percent to Rs 5,657 crore compared to Rs 5,131 crore in same quarter last fiscal, supported by higher export sales. Other income more than halved to Rs 95.3 crore from Rs 222 crore during the same period.

Don't miss: Goldman Sachs removes ITC from conviction list, retains buy

The market continues to surge supported by banks, auto and realty stocks. The

Sensex is up 665.49 points or 2 percent at 28012.31 and the Nifty is up 199.75 points or 2.4 percent at 8477.30. About 1596 shares have advanced, 1005 shares declined, and 341 shares are unchanged.

HDFC, ICICI Bank, SBI, M&M and Tata Power are top gainers in the Sensex. Bajaj Auto is up 3 percent after it posted better-than-expected December quarter results.

Crude oil dipped after a volatile session the previous day, when prices rebounded sharply from near-six-year lows that reflected a global oversupply.Jefferies said the use of floating storage would, in the near term, absorb barrels from the market in excess of physical demand, but noted that "those same barrels will eventually be delivered and could moderate a future price recovery". 

Google partners with auto suppliers on self-driving car

Internet search company Google Inc has begun discussions with most of the world's top automakers and has assembled a team of traditional and nontraditional suppliers to speed efforts to bring self-driving cars to market by 2020, a Google executive said on Wednesday.

"We'd be remiss not to talk to ... the biggest auto manufacturers. They've got a lot to offer," Chris Urmson, director of Google's self-driving car project, said in an interview.

Those manufacturers, he said, include General Motors Co, Ford Motor Co, Toyota Motor Corp, Daimler AG and Volkswagen AG.

"For us to jump in and say that we can do this better, that's arrogant," Urmson said. Google has not determined whether it will build its own self-driving vehicles or function more as a provider of systems and software to established vehicle manufacturers.

Google's self-driving prototype cars, he said, were built in Detroit by engineering and specialty manufacturing company Roush.

GM is open to working with Google on self-driving cars, Jon Lauckner, GM's chief technology officer, said on Monday.

Urmson's expectation that the first fully autonomous vehicles will be production-ready within five years mirrors the view expressed a day earlier by another Silicon Valley entrepreneur, Elon Musk, chief executive of Tesla Motors Inc.

Musk, who spoke Tuesday at the Automotive News World Congress conference, said he expects the lack of clear federal regulations covering self-driving cars could delay their introduction until 2022 or 2023.

Urmson, however, said his Google colleagues "don't see any particular regulatory hurdles."

Google has been briefing the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, the chief U.S. auto regulator, "from early on in our program," Urmson said. "The worst thing we could do is surprise them."

Urmson said Google is developing and refining self-driving systems and components with such auto parts suppliers as Continental AG, Robert Bosch, ZF and LG Electronics. Google's prototype cars use microprocessors made by Nvidia Corp , a Silicon Valley chipmaker that also supplies Mercedes-Benz and other automakers.

Continental said it began discussions in 2012 about supplying parts for Google's self-driving car. Google asked the German supplier to provide tires, some electronics and other components, according to Samir Salman, chief executive of Continental's NAFTA region.

Google shortly will begin deploying a test fleet of fully functioning prototypes of its pod-like self-driving car, which dispenses with such familiar automotive parts as steering wheel, brakes and accelerator pedal. While each of the Google prototypes will have a "test driver" on board, the cars have no provision for human intervention in steering or braking.

Urmson suggested the no-frills look of the Google prototypes, a far cry from the opulent appearance of the self-driving F015 concept vehicle unveiled last week by Mercedes, does not necessarily reflect the final design for production.

He described the Google prototype as "a practical, near-term testing platform" that will evolve over time.

"Airliners today don't look like the Wright brothers' flyer" of 100 years ago, he said. 

Urmson said self-driving cars represent a "transformative" moment in the evolution of transportation, an opportunity to extend motoring to blind, elderly and disabled persons who otherwise could not drive.

"You're really changing the relationship you have with transportation. You're changing what it means to get around."

Regarding Google's desire to partner with traditional automakers and suppliers, Urmson said Detroit is more innovative than is sometimes acknowledged. Automakers are "doing something incredibly complicated."

"You look at a car ... and people forget just how much magic there is in that thing."

New year surprise: Rupee trading at fresh 1-month high of 61.75

Mumbai, Jan 15:   

The rupee spurted 43 paise to trade at a fresh one-month high of 61.75 against the dollar at 11.55 am local time as the RBI cut interest rates by 25 bps to 7.75 per cent. 

After opening strong at 61.72 at the Interbank Foreign Exchange market, the domestic unit hovered in the range of 61.71 and 62.19 in the morning trade. 

Forex dealers said a strong domestic equity market and dollar’s weakness against other Asian currencies also supported the rupee. 

The rupee had ended four paise lower at 62.18 on fresh dollar demand from banks and importers in yesterday’s trade in view of a fall in crude oil prices. 

Meanwhile, the benchmark BSE Sensex was trading at 27,881.68, up 535.79 points in the pre-noon session.

After France attacks, US worried by anti-Semitism in Europe

Washington: The White House voiced alarm on Tuesday at a surge in anti-Semitism in Europe and in France, after last week`s attack in Paris on a kosher supermarket, which killed four Jewish people.

"The violent assault on the Jewish community in France that took place on Friday afternoon (...) was the latest in a series of very troubling incidents in Europe and around the world that reflect a rising tide of anti-Semitism," White House chief of staff Denis McDonough said at an American Jewish committee event in a Washington synagogue.

"On behalf of the President (Barack Obama) I am here to affirm our nations` solidarity to the French people and the Jewish community in France, and around the world, to condemn in the strongest possible terms the violent attacks of last week" on the market, and at satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo where 12 people were killed. Including a policewoman shot dead in a related incident, 17 people lost their lives in the three-day killing spree all told.

"We will not waver in our commitment to combat the scourge of anti-semitism," McDonough stressed, adding that: "from the President on down, you have my commitment that we will wage this fight tirelessly, and together."

Recalling Obama`s mentioning this week that France is the United States` oldest ally, McDonough said "we stand in solidarity with the French people and share this steadfast commitment to the values of liberty, free expression, coexistence and religious freedom that were so cruelly and violently assaulted in Paris last week."

There are between 4.5-5.7 million American Jews, the largest Jewish community outside Israel.

Serial killer' rickshaw-puller arrested in Faridabad

A rickshaw-puller was arrested from Faridabad in Haryana on charge of robbing and killing his passengers in the National Capital Region (NCR), police said on Friday.

According to police, the serial killer rickshaw-puller, identified as Rinku, was involved in at least 8 cases of robbery and murder, five of which took place in Faridabad and the rest in Delhi.

The police said Rinku used to rob passengers and would kill them on being resisted. They were interrogating the accused and more details about him were awaited.