Quite Start for Market after A Long Weekend

Welcome back to D-Street. I hope you enjoyed the long Diwali weekend splendidly. In early action, SGX Nifty indicates markets to open on a flat to positive note on the back of the rally seen on Wall Street overnight after the White House hinted that the phase one of the trade deal with China Could be signed the next month. The index is trading with gains of 12 points at 11,678 levels. On the domestic front, corporate results will remain the most concurrent of the factors, driving the market today. Among the prominent ones, Bharti Airtel, Petronet LNG, and Hindustan Zinc will present their Q2 numbers today.
 
This morning, the Asian markets are trading mixed, with Japan’s Nikkei 225 being in the lead. Currently, Nikkei 225 is up by 0.48 per cent and is followed by the benchmark in Taiwan. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng and China’s Shanghai Composite were trading with modest losses at the time of writing this.
 
Back home, the one-hour special trading session on the auspicious occasion of Diwali, widely known as the ‘Muhurat Trading Session’, ended in the green. Key benchmark indices started the session of a jubilant note and came off from the day’s high to end the day with Nifty, clocking gains of 0.37 per cent, and BSE Sensex, rallying nearly half a per cent. The showstopper, among the Nifty50 stocks, was Tata Motors as it rallied 16 per cent after the automaker posted a smaller-than-expected loss in the quarter ended September 30, 2019. Meanwhile, traction was seen in broader indices as well, with Nifty Midcap and Smallcap, surging 0.66 and 1.18 per cent, respectively. Talking about the sectoral performance, buying interest was seen across the board with Nifty Auto outperforming the rest. The advance-decline ratio was in favor of the advancers.
 
In overnight developments, the US equities edged higher on Monday, with the S&P 500 Index, reaching an all-time high, and the tech-heavy NASDAQ, moving within striking distance of a new record high. The optimism over a US-china trade deal continued to drive the stocks on Wall Street and was aided by the news that the European Union (EU) has granted the UK’s request for a Brexit deadline extension. The European markets also ended the session in green after the EU granted the region a three-month extension to finalize a divorce agreement.