Indian share markets witnessed buying momentum in the afternoon session and finished on a positive note. At the closing bell, the BSE Sensex closed higher by 70 points and the NSE Nifty finished higher by 39 points. The S&P BSE Mid Cap finished up by 0.8% while S&P BSE Small Cap finished up by 0.7%. Gains were largely seen in realty sector, metal sector and pharma sector.

Asian stock markets mixed as of the most recent closing prices. The Shanghai Composite gained 0.78%. The Nikkei 225 lost 0.20%.

Rupee was trading at Rs 64.05 against the US$ in the afternoon session. Oil prices were trading at US$ 58.44 at the time of writing.

At the time of writing, gold prices were trading on an encouraging note. Returns from gold have been anything but flattering. Mainly a hedge against market volatility, gold prices have remained at roughly the same levels since 2013.

On the contrary, share market in India has been on a constant upward trajectory during the same period. The only blip seen was in 2016, when gold prices gave healthy returns.

One more reason for the lackluster returns has been the global economy. US interest rates have been on the rise since 2014. This has swayed investors’ interest towards government bonds, subsequently reducing demand for gold.

While the US Federal Reserve is also expected to raise interest rates next year, current gold valuations seem to have factored that in.

Moving on to news from banking sector. As per a leading financial daily, NPAs of Public Sector Banks (PSB) reached to Rs 7.33 trillion as of September 2017, mainly due to corporate defaulters despite the governments’ various efforts.

As per the RBI data, though the bad loans of PSBs are rising high, the private sector banks reported a considerably lower NPA figure of Rs 1.02 trillion.

Public sector banks appeared more stressed than private banks, with country’s largest bank, State Bank of India (SBI) accounted for the largest share in the total NPAs at over Rs 1.86 trillion, followed by Punjab National Bank (Rs 576.3 billion), Bank of India (Rs 493.07 billion), Bank of Baroda (Rs 463.07 billion), Canara Bank (Rs 391.64 billion) and Union Bank of India (Rs 382.86 billion).