Fireworks wrap up Wall Street's best week in 2 years

US stocks started July with a bang on Friday with Wall Street scoring its best week in two years on strong manufacturing data that eased concerns about slowing growth.

The data spurred the rally into a fifth straight day, even as continued light trading volume called into question the sustainability of the gains.

Investors were growing more optimistic a day after a temporary resolution to Greece's debt situation. The S&P 500 climbed further above resistance at its 50-day moving average at 1,317, establishing another floor in the market after the benchmark index moved above a number of technical resistance levels.

"The magnitude of today's move is undoubtedly due to the light volume," said John Norris, director of wealth management with Oakworth Capital Bank in Birmingham, Alabama. "We'll take positive movement, however we can get it, but the gains could prove somewhat illusory."

Volume was light, with 6.2 billion shares traded on the New York Stock Exchange, the American Stock Exchange and Nasdaq, well below the year's daily average of 7.55 billion.

Sibal cuts RCom penalties by crores

The arrival of Kapil Sibal in the Communications Ministry has saved Anil Ambani’s Reliance Communications (RCom) a huge sum of money payable as penalty.

Sibal has whittled down the penalty of Rs 50 crore per circle proposed by the administrator of the Universal Service Obligation Fund (USOF) to a few lakhs for violating its contract to provide mobile services in rural areas. For 13 circles, the fine could have added up to Rs 650 crore.

The USOF is a fund used to subsidise rural telephony. Telecom operators can bid for providing this service, and even ask for subsidies. But RCom bid aggressively for many USOF clusters even without subsidies, and later found them unviable and switched off without the USOF Administrator’s permission.

Under an agreement dated 16 May, 2007, RCom had agreed to provide this service from base transceiver stations (BTSs) in 53 clusters (5,118 sites). As on 30 November 2010, RCom and its sister company Reliance Telecom had commissioned 3,205 BTSs.

Nifty in narrow range

The benchmark Nifty was trading lower amid volatility today, pulled down by further fall in Reliance Industries,  Bharti Airtel, HUL, ITC, HDFC Bank, L&T and SBI. Overall the Nifty was moving in a range of 5610-5645.

However, the buying in ONGC, Infosys, TCS, ICICI Bank, Wipro and DLF has capped the downside.

The 30-share BSE Sensex was trading at 18,783, down 62 points and the 50-share NSE Nifty fell 15 points to 5,632. However, the broader indices were up over half a percent.

IT & BPO sectors top the job seeker’s list in India

Of the one million jobs that were created in India in 2010-2011, 70 percent were in the IT and BPO space despite anti-outsourcing measures taken by the US and other developed economies, shows data from the Ministry of labour and employment.

Overall 1,74000 jobs were created in the fourth quarter of last year, with 287,000 jobs in IT and BPO sector, followed by 16,000 increase in metals, 13,000 in automobile industry and 6,000 in the transport industry according to the 10th quarterly survey on “effect of economic slowdown on employment in India”.

Another study by HR firm Ma Foi Randstad stated that the top twenty companies  for employment  in India include Infosys, TCS, Larsen & Toubro, NTPC, ONGC, Toyota and Oracle. The survey, which covered about 10,000 respondents, reiterated that IT sector, including BPO and ITeS, were the prime choice for employment, followed by energy, consulting, consumer goods & retail and travel & hospitality areas.

287,000 jobs were created in IT and BPO sector in the last quarter. Photo by Allesia Re/Flickr

On the other hand fat pay packages,  a good working environment, job security and work -life balance seem to top the priority list of job seekers in India. E Balaji, the MD and CEO AT Ma Foi Randstand noted that women  preferred to have their office in a good location while men were mainly looking for the financial health of companies. The survey was conducted from December to February 2011.

Sensex lower

Indian equity benchmarks slipped further on the back of profit booking after seeing sharp rally of nearly 1300 points on theSensex since last week. Reliance Industries was the main culprit behind downtrend in trade today, followed by Bharti Airtel, ITC, HUL, L&T and NTPC.

"The rally of almost 1,300 points in Sensex over the last three-four days has very little fundamental to back it up. So I doubt this is sustainable," Anantha Nageswaran, Senior Economic Advisor at Julius Baer tells CNBC-TV 18.

The 30-share BSE Sensex fell 88 points to 18,757 and the 50-share NSE Nifty lost 27 points to 5,619.