Markets to make a green start extending last session’s gains

The Indian markets showed a smart rebound in the last session with benchmarks recovering all their weekly losses. Today, the start of the data heavy week is likely to be in green though traders will be eyeing next batch of quarterly results, macroeconomic data and developments in Parliament on key reform bills for further cues. Meanwhile, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley has said that India's economy grew an estimated 7-7.5 percent last fiscal year and will keep growing this year, but the government will have to invest more in agriculture to keep up the momentum. There will be some cautiousness too, with the industry body ASSOCHAM paper stating that Indian basket of crude oil rising by 11 per cent in rupee terms in the last 8-9 days, volatility in energy prices has re-surfaced as the biggest worry for the Indian industry and the policy makers. Traders will be eyeing the development in the parliament with the government all set to move the Undisclosed Foreign Income and Assets Bill, or the black money bill today. There will be some buzz in the fertilizer stocks on a CAG report that no significant investment was made in the fertiliser sector during 2010-14 period even after the launch of Nutrient Based Subsidy scheme to promote the domestic industry.

The US markets surged in last session on getting good jobs data. Traders turned jubilant with the jobless rate falling to 5.4 percent from 5.5 percent, the lowest since May 2008. The Asian markets are trading mostly in green, though there was some cautiousness too with the Chinese central bank cutting interest rates for the third time in six months during the weekend.

Back home, snapping three days losing streak, Indian equity benchmarks staged an enthusiastic performance on Friday, by rallying around two percentage points and breaking lots of psychological levels in their northward journey as investors opted to buy beaten-down but fundamentally strong stocks after three days of continues drubbing. Sentiments remained positive since beginning of the trade and there appeared not even an iota of profit booking in the session as the benchmarks managed to fervently gain from strength to strength as investors continued hunt for fundamentally strong but oversold stocks. Some support came with Finance Minister Arun Jaitley announcing a high level committee, which will give its first recommendations on the issue of imposition of MAT on foreign investors. The committee would also look into few other tax issues, which are essentially legacy issues. Uptrend was also helped by the comments from global rating agencies like Fitch and Moody's which  said that India credit ratings will remain unaffected by the recent surge in capital outflows as relative to its peers India's external balances are strong and adequate to withstand current outflows. Firm opening in European counters too lifted the sentiments, while Asian markets ended the session mostly in the green. Back home, there was broad based buying witnessed in the markets and apart from the blue chips, the broader markets too equally participated in the rally. Frontline indices managed to settle near intraday high levels with Nifty ending near its crucial 8,200 level, while sensex ending above its crucial 27,100 bastion. Recovery in Indian rupee too supported the sentiments. The rupee firmed up against the US dollar and was trading at 63.93 at the time of equity markets closing as compared to Thursday’s close of 64.23, tracking gains in domestic equity markets. Finally, the BSE Sensex surged by 506.28 points or 1.90% to 27105.39, while the CNX Nifty soared by 134.20 points or 1.67% to 8,191.50.