Markets to make a flat but positive start tailing regional indices

The Indian markets, showed some valiant effort in the final hours of trade after remaining lower through the day in the last session, but could manage only a flat close with a negative bias. Today, the start is likely to be marginally in green and some recovery can be seen. However, there will be some cautiousness too with markets regulator Sebi tightening P-Note norms by levying a fee of $1,000 on each instrument and barring their issuance for speculative purposes to check any misuse for channelling of black money. Meanwhile, in order to ensure preparedness for the Goods and Services Tax (GST) roll-out from July 1, the Ministry of Electronics & Information Technology launched a dedicated webpage for facilitating taxpayers with regard to addressing issues related to IT services and electronic goods. The Union Minister of State for Energy and Coal (independent charge), Piyush Goyal, describing GST as the most revolutionary tax reform since Independence, has sought the co-operation of the trade, industry and all sections of society to make it a huge success. There will be buzz in the banking stocks, as Banks led by State Bank of India marking a significant move in the cleanup bad loans, will decide today the fate of three large defaulters-Essar Steel, Bhushan Steel and Electrosteel Steels which constitute nearly half of the loans of the top 12 defaulters identified by the Reserve Bank of India.

The US markets made a mixed closing in last session, as traders expressed some uncertainty about the near-term outlook for the markets following the recent record highs for the Dow and the S&P 500. The Asian markets have made mostly a positive start as the oil halted its slide. The Japanese market too was modestly up despite the yen’s strength.

Back home, Indian equity benchmarks carried forward their southward journey for yet another session on Wednesday, as market participants waited for minutes of a June policy meet by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) to gauge the direction of interest rates in the months ahead. Today's session largely remained characterized by choppiness as the aimless indices moved only sideways in a tight band lacking triggers for most part of the day. Sentiments remained downbeat with the inclusion of Chinese mainland stocks to the MSCI index, which could lead to hundreds of billions of dollars worth of share purchases, shrinking shares of other emerging markets, including India. Some concerns also came with CARE Ratings' latest report that the fiscal deficit estimate for 2017-18 is set to rise to 3.35% from present 3.24% of GDP, impacted by Rs 17,780 crore shortfall in non-tax revenue (NTR) target from telecom services. Besides, muted trend in other Asian markets following a renewed slump in oil prices to seven-month lows also weighed the sentiment. However, losses remained capped with the report that India's farm sector is poised for a boom as monsoon's biggest threat, the El Nino phenomenon, has been completely ruled out and heavy showers in the key agricultural regions of Punjab, Haryana and Uttar Pradesh have created the right conditions for crop planting. The widely respected Australian weather office had formally withdrawn its El Nino alert and said that outlook for the phenomenon was inactive. Meanwhile, India has witnessed a whopping 30% rise in the foreign exchange earnings from the tourism sector in the month of May, as compared to the same period in the last two years and a 19% increase in tourist footfalls. According to the Reserve Bank of India's credit data of Travel Head from Balance of Payments, foreign exchange earnings (FEEs) during the month of May 2017 were Rs 12,403 crore as compared to Rs 10,260 crore in May 2016 and Rs 9,505 crore in May 2015. Finally, the BSE Sensex declined 13.89 points or 0.04% to 31283.64, while the CNX Nifty was down by 19.90 points or 0.21% to 9,633.60.