Markets may witness tepid start following negative global cues

The Finance Ministry warning of lower GDP in Q4FY19 to be an overhang on the domestic markets on Friday. Also, in overnight trade, the US markets continued to be under pressure and in early trade cues from Asian peers are negative. Hence, we expect a dull start to the day. At the time of writing, SGX Nifty was trading 11 points lower at 11,744. Corporate results will continue to pour in with stocks like Century Textile, Godrej Consumer Products, Hindustan Unilever, Tata Chemical set to announce their numbers today.

A majority of the Asian markets are trading in the red on Friday following decline on the Wall Street for the second consecutive trading session. Hong Kong’s index Hang Seng is trading down by 0.56 per cent, while markets in Japan and China were closed for a holiday.

Back home, the equity benchmark indices, after swinging between the green and red territory, ended Thursday’s session with a marginal cut and extended their fall for the second consecutive day. The Nifty ended with a mild cut of 0.20 per cent and BSE Sensex dipped 0.13 per cent. The broader market indices ended the day on a mixed note with Nifty Midcap losing 0.60 per cent, while Nifty Smallcap closing unchanged. Talking about sectoral performance, barring Nifty Financial Services, Nifty Realty and Nifty PSU Bank, all other sectoral indices ended in the red, with Nifty IT and Nifty Media leading the losers.

The US stocks ended Thursday's session with modest decline and shrugged off better-than-expected reads on the US non-farm productivity and factory orders, as well as mostly upbeat earnings results. The statement of Federal Reserve Chairman Powell continued as an overhang on the markets, which suggested that there may not be interest rate cut in the near future. In the end, the Dow Industrial Average declined 0.46 per cent, the S&P 500 fell 0.21 per cent and the tech-heavy Nasdaq slipped 0.16 per cent.

Majority of the European stocks ended in the red on Thursday amid disappointing Eurozone economic data and Fed Chairman Powell comments ruling out any interest rate cut in the near future. The Bank of England left its policy stance unchanged.  The UK’s FTSE 100 lost 0.46 per cent, Germany’s benchmark DAX shed 0.85 per cent, while France’s CAC 40 added 0.01 per cent.