Markets to make a soft start tailing feeble global cues

The Indian markets slumped in last session after going through a volatile day of trade. Apart from political concerns, some downbeat earnings too contributed to the fall. Today, the start is likely to be in red, with Nifty testing the 8550 levels on feeble global cues. There will be some buzz in the financial sector, as the Finance Ministry has come up with a revised draft of the Indian Financial Code and sought stakeholders’ comments on the same by August 8. Going by the revised draft of the Indian Financial Code, the government is moving to take over powers to set the monetary policy. It has also proposed taking away the RBI governor’s authority to veto the interest rate decision of the Central bank’s monetary policy committee. The power and coal stocks will be in action today, as the government will be putting 10 more coal mines up for auction in the third phase in next month, separately it has been reported that operations have commenced in seven of the 67 coal mines that were auctioned or allotted by the government, while the remaining blocks are at various stages of development.  Apart from that there will be lots of important result announcements to keep the markets in action. 

The US markets continued their decline and ended in red once again in the last session, reacting to the latest batch of earnings, even though the initial jobless claims declined to their lowest levels in over forty years to 255,000. The Asian markets have made a soft start, with some of the indices trading lower by around a percent. Though, the Chinese market was modestly in green on stimulus hopes, after a manufacturing index unexpectedly fell to the lowest in 15 months.

Back home, Indian equity benchmarks ended the choppy day of trade with a cut of around half a percent on Thursday with frontline gauges ending below their crucial 28,400 (Sensex) and 8,600 (Nifty) levels on the back of weak Q1 earnings from high profile companies. Markets, after a positive start, entered into negative terrain as sentiment remained down-beat after Rajya Sabha once again getting adjourned today. The upper house could not transact any business for the second successive day on Wednesday as treasury and opposition benches stuck to their positions, with opposition parties aggressively pressing for the resignation of external affairs minister Sushma Swaraj along with Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh chief ministers. Markets tried to regain their positive terrain couple of times in second half of trade but every attempt was reciprocated with profit booking. Traders remained worried on fear that the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) will leave the interest rates unchanged in its August 4 policy review meet given the acceleration in June headline CPI inflation and increase in core CPI for the third consecutive month. Markets failed to get any sense of relief from report that foreign direct investment (FDI) in the country rose to four-month high of $3.85 billion in May 2015, up by 7 percent compared to $3.60 billion in the same month of last year. Significantly, the FDI figures for May 2015 are the highest since January 2015, when foreign equity investment was at $4.48 billion. On the global front, European markets traded in green in early deals, while Asian markets ended mixed. Back home, depreciation in Indian rupee too dampened the sentiments. Disappointing Q1 earning from high profile companies too contributed towards markets downfall. Lupin missed Q1 street estimates, reporting a net profit of Rs 525 crore on sales of Rs 3,074 crore in the June quarter. Bajaj Auto’s first quarter profit surpassed street expectations, boosted by other income but the topline and operating profit missed forecast. Finally, the BSE Sensex plunged by 134.09 points or 0.47% to 28370.84, while the CNX Nifty declined by 43.70 points or 0.51% to 8589.80.