A soft start likely

The outlook is a muted start for the Indian markets. Market participants will react to the earnings of IT marquee names TCS and Infosys in early trading and also to the macro numbers released post market on Friday. The retail inflation touched a 5-month high of 2.6 per cent for the month of March 2019, but remained below the RBI benchmark of 4 per cent, while the IIP numbers were almost stagnated at 0.1 per cent due to negative growth in manufacturing, which accounts for a bulk of the IIP basket. At the time of writing, SGX Nifty was trading marginal down by 12 points at 11,679. We are of the view that Nifty may spend some more time in a consolidation range, while movement on the stock-specific front would keep the market participants busy.  

Asian stock were seen advancing on Monday on the back of strong cues from the Wall Street on Friday and better-than-expected Chinese economic data that helped eased concerns about a slowdown. The Japanese stock market Nikkei jumped 1.20 per cent.

Back home, key benchmark indices had a flat opening and slowly the indices seemed to be paring early morning gains and drifted lower. But, thereafter, indices traded in a capped range. However, it was in the eleventh hour that the bulls made a strong comeback and the indices ended in the green. Nifty ended at 11,643, up by 0.40 per cent, and BSE Sensex rose 0.41 per cent to 38,767. The broader markets outperformed the benchmark indices, with Nifty Midcap and Smallcap gaining 0.42 per cent and 0.69 per cent, respectively. All sectoral indices ended in the green, with Nifty Media and Nifty FMCG leading the gainers.

The US stocks indices began the final trading session of the week with sizeable gains and held firmly in the positive territory throughout the session. The sentiments remained upbeat on the Wall Street as earnings season got off to a good start with JP Morgan earnings partly offsetting some of the recent concerns about corporate earnings. The Dow Industrial Average jumped 1.03 per cent, the tech-heavy Nasdaq added 0.46 per cent and the S&P 500 index advanced 0.66 per cent.

European markets ended Friday’s session in the green. France’s CAC 40 rose 0.31 per cent and the DAX of Germany advanced 0.54 per cent and UK’s FTSE 100 ended higher by 0.26 per cent.