Markets to make a green start of the Budget week

The Indian markets snapped their winning streak in last session and stocks succumbed to profit booking ahead of major events of budget and F&O expiry. Today, the start of the crucial budget week which will be an extended one with trading allowed on Saturday, the budget day, is likely to be in green with Nifty reclaiming its key psychological level of 8850 in opening trade only. The metal and power stocks will keep buzzing with the end of the first round of coal block e-auction, which saw some of the key names in the industry bagging 18 mines with a combined extractable reserve of 90 million tonnes, along with attached end-use infrastructure. Now all eyes will be on telecom companies with operators depositing a huge Rs 20,435 crore as earnest money for spectrum auction, government is set to garner over Rs 1 lakh crore from sale of radiowaves. The Infra stocks are likely to remain in action, as the Union Minister Nitin Gadkari has unveiled plans for Rs 10 lakh crore investment in highways and shipping sectors by 2019. He has said that government is working on an ambitious plan to build one smart city each at the country's 12 major ports. Also there will be some scrip specific action with NSE announcing that at the next index rebalance on March 27; Nifty will be dropping DLF and JSPL, while the Idea Cellular and Yes Bank will be included in the index.

The US markets made a green closing in last session with all the major averages surging to their record highs. Flash report of upbeat manufacturing sector boosted the sentiments of the market. The Asian markets have made mostly a positive start, though some indices are marginally in red too but the Japanese market made a higher start, after eurozone ministers agreed to extend Greece's bailout by four months.

Back home, snapping seven-day winning streak, Indian equity benchmarks ended the Friday’s trade with a cut of three fourth of a percent due to profit-booking by retail investors and funds. Apart from that, a cautious stance by market participants ahead of the Union Budget influenced the trading sentiment. Key gauges traded in red terrain throughout the session, though they tried to make some recovery for couple of times but it was not enough to pull benchmarks back into positive territory and domestic markets ended below their crucial 29,300 (Sensex) and 8,850 (Nifty) levels. Moreover, markets failed to draw any sense of relief with Union Ministry of Commerce and Industry allaying fears over Free Trade Agreements (FTAs), saying that FTA pacts may not lead to trade deficits. Markets also failed to draw heart from Finance Minister Arun Jaitley’s statement that India is ranked fairly low in ease of doing business. On the global front, European markets traded mostly in the red in early deals, while the Japanese stocks ended at fresh 15-year high. Back home, sentiments remained dampened on reports that Domestic institutional investors (DIIs) sold shares worth a net Rs 195.74 crore on Thursday, as per provisional data released by the stock exchanges. Selling in software and technology counters too dampened the sentiments. Oil marketing companies line BPCL and IOC edged lower as brent crude oil futures edged higher on expectations that data later in the day would show a continuing decline in the US oil rig count, a clear sign of the pressure the tumble in crude is putting on oil producers. Additionally, RIL slumped over three percent after one employee of the company was reportedly detained as part of a probe into data theft from the petroleum ministry. On the flip side, stocks related to sugar sector continued to edged higher after CCEA approved the continuation of the incentive scheme for marketing and promotion services of raw sugar production during current sugar season 2014-15. Finally, the BSE Sensex declined by 230.86 points or 0.78% to 29231.41, while the CNX Nifty dropped 61.70 points or 0.69% to 8833.60.