Markets to extend gains with a mildly positive start

The Indian markets rallied in last session with IT and telecom stocks taking the charge. Today, the start is likely to be in green tailing the positive trade in Asian peers. Traders will also be reacting to yearly SBI Composite Index (year-on-year or y-o-y) for February 2017 improving to 49.5 compared to last month’s index of 47.0, indicating some improvement in sentiment. The monthly Index though declined marginally to 49.2 in February 2017 from 50.9 in Jan 2017 which means IIP growth may continue to contract in January and February 2017.  The steel stocks will remain in action as the government has extended anti-dumping duty on import of certain steel products from China for five years with an aim to protect domestic players from the cheap shipments. The levy has been imposed in the range of $ 961.33 - 1,610.67. There will be some buzz in the PSU banking stocks too, as heads of top ten state-run banks have met finance minister Arun Jaitley to raise concerns over aggressive investigation into non-performing loans which they said has impacted business. Meanwhile, Commerce Minister and US lawmakers have discussed H-1B restrictions.

The US markets remained closed in last session unable to give any cues to the other global markets. The Asian markets have made mostly a positive start and the dollar strengthened with Asian equities after a Federal Reserve official said a March interest rate hike is not off the table.

Back home, Indian stock markets finished the first day of F&O expiry week on an optimistic note, with Sensex gaining over half a percept, while Nifty closed above 8850 mark. Investors continued to build hefty positions across the board as sentiments got a boost after the report that GST Council on Saturday approved a law to compensate states for any loss of revenue from the implementation of the new national sales tax but deferred approval for enabling laws to the next meeting. The council will meet again on March 4 and 5 to approve the legally vetted draft of the supporting legislations for Central GST (C-GST) and Integrated GST (I- GST), days before the start of the second leg of the Budget Session. Some support also came with the report that overseas investment in India is likely to surge to a record in the year ending March despite temporary growth hiccups ascribed to the currency swap programme. India’s FDI in the April-December period rose 22% to $35.8 billion from the year earlier. With three months to go for the fiscal year end, the government expects fresh inflows into equity to top the $40 billion India got in FY16. Meanwhile, stocks related to Sugar sector remained in focus after the report that India's sugar deficit increased to 15% as on February 15, from 10% on January 31, as sugarcane crushing season in Karnataka has almost come to an end, while that of Maharashtra is at its fag end. Furthermore, some banking stocks came into lime light on the report that once the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Bill is passed, the sale of bad loans to asset reconstruction companies (ARCs) could improve substantially to 30-35% of the loans put on the block by banks and financial institutions from the current 10-15%.Finally, the BSE Sensex surged 192.83 points or 0.68% to 28661.58, while the CNX Nifty was up by 57.50 points or 0.65% to 8,879.20.