Markets may open cautious amid muted global cues

Indian markets are likely to open the session on a cautious note as cues from Asian peers and Wall Street overnight were mixed. At the time of writing, SGX Nifty was trading marginally lower by 3 points at 11,726 level. Hero MotoCorp, PEL and Yes Bank are some of the key results in focus today.  

Asian markets are trading mixed in early trading on the final trading session of the week following mixed cues from the Wall Street overnight. Hong Kong’s index Hang Seng is trading up by 0.12 per cent, while the Japanese stock market Nikkei had shed 0.60 per cent and China’s Shanghai Composite is almost unchanged.   

Back home, Thursday turned out to be a terrible day for the key benchmark indices as the indices wiped out all of its gains amid weak global cues and some disappointing earnings announcements and ended the session in the red. The BSE Sensex lost 0.83 per cent and Nifty ended lower by 0.72 per cent. A divergent trend was seen in the broader market indices with Nifty Midcap edging down 0.39 per cent, while Nifty Smallcap added 0.02 per cent. Mostly sectoral indices ended lower, however, Nifty Realty emerged as the sole gainer. Top losers among the sectoral indices were Nifty Metal and Nifty PSU Bank. 

The US equities put in a mixed to weak performance on Thursday as market participants digested latest batch of earnings. On the earnings front, 3M put pressure on the Dow; however, this was partially offset by robust earnings from Microsoft. On the economic front, durable goods orders came in better-than-expected, while the jobless claims surprisingly jumped.  The Dow Industrial Average fell 0.51 per cent and the S&P 500 closed flat with a negative bias, while the tech-heavy Nasdaq added 0.21 per cent.

Equity markets in European mostly ended in the red on Thursday with market participants reacting to latest batch of earnings. Also, reports of failure of merger talks between Deutsche Bank and Commerzbank added fuel to the fire. The UK’s FTSE 100 shed 0.50 per cent; France’s CAC 40 lost 0.33 per cent and Germany’s DAX dipped 0.25 per cent.