SGX Nifty indicates a weak start

Judging by the early action at SGX Nifty, it seems the markets are likely to witness a shaky start, with the increasing uncertainty over the Sino-American trade deal. At the time of writing this, the SGX Nifty was down by 12 points at 11,999 levels. On Wednesday evening, the Centre gave the in-principle approval for the strategic disinvestment of the government shareholding in 5 PSUs. Further, with its back to the wall, telecom operators have been provided with a major relief as the Cabinet approved two year’s moratorium on spectrum payment dues.

On the Asian side, concerns regarding the trade deal between the US and China not be concluding this year are looming large and pushing the deal into the coming year is not going down too well for the global economy. All the stock markets across Asia are trading in the red. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng is massively down by 444 points (1.65 per cent) while Japan’s Nikkei 225 declined by 1.19 per cent and China’s Shanghai Composite has lost 0.27 per cent.

Back home, the markets continued to surge higher on Wednesday and ended the session at the day’s high. At the closing bell, the Nifty settled at 11,999 up by 0.49 per cent. The BSE Sensex hit a fresh record high of 40,816 in the morning session but closed at 40,652 up by 0.45 per cent. The broader market indices underperformed large-cap indices, with the Nifty Midcap and Smallcap closing marginally in the green. On the sectoral front, Nifty Pharma and Nifty Media were the top gainers while Nifty Realty and Nifty PSU Bank were the top decliners.

As for global happenings, the US markets declined on Wednesday but finished well off their worst levels of the day. The market participants were seen hesitant on the Wall Street as trade talks with China showed signs of slipping into next year without progress. At the end of the day, the Dow was down 113 points, the NASDAQ slid 44 points, and S&P 500 slipped 12 points. The European markets too finished in the negative terrain.