Brace for a negatively biased day
In the last session, Indian benchmark indices tumbled from record highs to close with deep cuts. However, with yesterday’s landslide, the market participants will be anxious to know what’s in store for the markets today! The International Monetary Fund (IMF) lowered India’s economic growth forecast to 4.8 per cent for this fiscal year, citing the crisis in the non-banking financial sector and weak rural demand. Ideally, this piece of data should impact the market sentiment big time. Further, the global cues are also dented. So overall, we are in for a shaky start and the bias is completely on the negative side today. SGX Nifty is down by 74 points at 12,198 levels. Among earnings, some of the key stocks like ZEEL, Havells, ICICI Prudential Life, and HDFC AMC are scheduled to release their quarterly earnings today.
Asian stocks are in a sea of red on Tuesday amid IMF that shaved its outlook for the growth of the world this year. Hong Kong is the worst performer with Hang Seng down by a huge 1.58 per cent so far. In China, the Shanghai Composite is trading almost 0.86 per cent below its yesterday’s close. While Japan, too is looking very weak, where the Nikkei 225 is down by 0.73 per cent. Also, the markets participants await the outcome of Bank of Japan’s latest policy meeting.
Back home, the markets witnessed a roller coaster ride after registering all-time highs in the initial tick, the markets fell off a cliff and ended the session near day’s low. Nifty plunged 1.03 per cent and BSE Sensex lost 0.99 per cent to settle at 12,225 and 41,529, respectively. In the broader markets, both Nifty mid-cap and small-cap ended in the red in-line with frontline indices and fell 0.59 and 0.67 per cent, respectively. On the sectoral front, barring Nifty Realty and Nifty FMCG, all other sectoral indices closed in the red today. Nifty Media, Nifty PSU Bank, Nifty Private Bank and Nifty Bank were the major decliners.
US markets remained closed on Monday on account of Martin Luther King holiday. Meanwhile, European markets ended lower on Monday as focus shit to Davos (Switzerland) for the annual World Economic Forum Conference.