D-Street braces for an unwelcome start!

The news from domestic as well as from the global front is not encouraging for the Indian markets on Monday. Firstly, the death toll from a coronavirus outbreak surpassed the SARS epidemic and secondly, TV exit polls are indicating thumbs up for Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) in Delhi. All-in-all, D-street braces for an unwelcome start to the week. Currently, SGX Nifty is down by 2 points trading at 12,082 levels. Stock specific action is likely to continue as market participants will track Q3 numbers from the corporates.

In Asia, barring China’s Shanghai Composite all other major Asian indices were trading in the red on Monday on the back of sell-off seen on Wall Street on Friday. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng has lost the most as it has declined 0.43 per cent, followed by Japan’s Nikkei 225 which was down by 0.21 per cent.

Back home, markets halted its four day winning streak as concerns regarding coronavirus resurfaced and resulted into profit booking on the D-Street. The BSE Sensex dropped 0.40 per cent to end at 41,142 and the Nifty slipped 0.33 per cent to end below 12,100 mark. The broader markets outperformed the frontline gauges as Nifty Midcap and Small-cap gained 0.66 and 0.11 per cent, respectively. The sectoral indices exhibited a mixed trend where in Nifty Media and Nifty Pharma were top gainers and on the flip side, Nifty Realty and Nifty Auto were top losers.

As for global happenings, US markets witnessed profit booking in the final session of the week after posting four-straight days of gains as market participants were tensed about the effect of the coronavirus on economic growth. The markets failed to take note of a strong January jobs report that showed a gain of 225,000 jobs, which was well above expectations. In the end, Dow tumbled 277 points, the S&P 500 shed 18 points and the Nasdaq declined 52 points. European indices too performed in line with their counterpart as some disappointing euro area economic data weighed on sentiments.