Positive opening likely despite mixed global cues

Key Indian equity market indices are expected to open in green despite lack of clear trend in the Asian markets. The bullish trend in SGX Nifty, which was trading higher by 47 points, indicated that Nifty could open at 11,325. On the macro front, Nikkei Services PMI for July will be announced today. Among Nifty 50 companies, Titan will report its numbers today.  

Asian equity markets are trading without any clear direction on Friday after the US administration said that President Donald Trump has asked US trade representative Robert Lighthizer to consider hiking the proposed tariffs on $200 billion worth of Chinese imports from previously announced 10 per cent to 25 per cent. Japan’s benchmark Nikkei 225 index has advanced 25 points, while Hong Kong's Hang Seng has slipped 28 points and China’s Shanghai Composite is almost unchanged.  
  
Back home, Thursday turned out to be a dismal day for Indian equity benchmarks as these ended the day with a cut of around one per cent and breached their crucial levels of 37,200 ( BSE Sensex)  and 11,250 (NSE Nifty) . The broader indices continued to show resilience as they outperformed the frontline indices as Nifty Mid-cap and Small-cap logged gains of 0.11 per cent and 0.10 per cent, respectively. Talking about sectoral performance, all indices barring Nifty Pharma and Nifty Metal  ended in the red, with top losers being Nifty Realty and Nifty Auto. 
 
The US stocks closed mostly in the green on Thursday. It was an historic landmark for the iPhone maker Apple as it became the first US company to reach a $1 trillion market capitalisation and this helped tech-heavy Nasdaq to log substantial gain. The Nasdaq rallied 95 points to close at 7,803 and the S&P 500 climbed 14 points to finish at 2,827. The Dow Jones Industrial Average bucked the trend and edged down 8 points to end at 25,326 after President Donald Trump’s administration confirmed reports it is considering raising the rate of tariffs on Chinese imports.  

The European stocks fell firmly on Thursday after Bank of England raised the base rate to 0.75 per cent, the highest since March 2009 . The nine-person Monetary Policy Committee voted unanimously to raise the base rate by 0.25 per cent. The DAX of Germany plummeted 1.52 per cent; CAC 40 of France dropped 0.68 per cent and UK’s FTSE 100 decreased 1.02 per cent.