Happy New Year, Dull Start for the markets!
Good morning and welcome to the first trading day of the year 2020! Before we begin with the note, we would like to wish all of our loyal readers a wonderful 2020 and may each day of the New Year be filled with contentment, opportunities, peace, and abundance.
Coming back to force, which could drive the market today, is the big news that closed the 2019 with a bang. The government made an announcement regarding its plans to invest Rs 102 lakh crore in infrastructural developments. According to the rating agency ICRA, this can be a trigger for boosting the growth and the construction sector is likely to be a major beneficiary of this increased investment. Meanwhile, the markets have to deal with worrying news as well since eight core industries output contracts 1.5 per cent in November. This is the fourth straight month of contraction. The outlook for the day is a subdued start, given that the SGX Nifty is trading almost unchanged at 12,244 level.
The Asian markets are shut of the New Year holiday on Wednesday.
Back home, key benchmark indices closed in negative territory, as market participants booked profit on the last trading session of calendar year 2019. The markets got off to a weak start and remained in red throughout the session. At the closing bell, BSE Sensex declined 0.73 per cent and Nifty dropped 0.71 per cent, respectively. The broader markets outperformed the major index, with Nifty Midcap and Small-cap being up by 0.14 per cent and 0.67 per cent, respectively. On the sectoral front, barring Nifty Realty and Nifty Metal, all other indices closed in the red.
In overnight developments, the US stocks showed lack of direction for the majority part of the trading session on Tuesday but picked up late in the session to finish modestly higher, marking a positive end to a stellar year for stocks that saw a series of record highs. Major news for the day was the White House indicating that its phase-one trade agreement with China is due to be signed in Washington on January 15. At the close, the Dow advanced 76 points, the tech-heavy NASDAQ rose 27 points, and the S&P 500 ended 9 points higher. The stocks in the European region ended in red but action was muted ahead of the holiday.