Markets likely to make cautious start of new series

Indian markets witnessed bloodbath on the back of heavy sell-off in the dying hours of the trade amid F&O expiry falling on Thursday. Today, the start of the new series is likely to be cautious amid mixed cues from the global markets. There will be some cautiousness with a report that the US placed India on its Priority Watch List alleging lack of sufficient measurable improvements to its Intellectual Property (IP) framework on long-standing and new challenges that have negatively affected American right holders over the past year. The report said over the past year, India took steps to address intellectual property challenges and promote IP protection and enforcement. Though, many of the actions have not yet translated into concrete benefits for innovators and creators, and longstanding deficiencies persist. India remains one of the world's most challenging major economies with respect to protection and enforcement of IP. Meanwhile, the India’s crude oil production fell over 4 per cent in the financial year 2018-19 after aging fields of state-owned Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC) and Oil India (OIL) missed the target. The Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas data showed that India produced 34.2 million tonne of crude oil in the fiscal year ended March 31, down from 35.7 million tonne in the previous year. However, traders may take some support later in the day with the Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI) data showing that bank credit rose by 14.19 percent to Rs 96.45 lakh crore while deposits grew 10.60 percent to Rs 125.30 lakh crore in the first fortnight ended on April 12. In the year ago fortnight, deposits were at Rs 113.29 lakh crore and advances stood at Rs 84.46 lakh crore. There will be some buzz in the power sector stocks with ICRA’s report that the power ministry's second auction for procuring 2.5 GW of thermal power in medium term at a higher tariff of Rs 4.41 per unit compared to Rs 4.24 per unit in the first round is positive for power producers, but signing of sale agreements with discoms remains crucial. There will be lots of important earnings announcements too, to keep the markets in action.

The US markets ended mostly lower on Thursday as disappointing earnings reports from several industrial sector companies weighed on the market, offsetting strong results from Facebook, Microsoft and others. Asian markets are trading mostly in red on Friday ahead of the release of US GDP numbers, due later in the day.

Back home, Indian bourses ended Thursday’s session near their day’s low points. After a cautious start, the markets traded firmly for the most part of the day, amid reports that giving relief to composition scheme taxpayers under the GST, the Finance Ministry has allowed such businesses to file self-assessed tax return on quarterly basis in a simplified form. In yet another simplification, the Goods and Services Tax (GST) Council has added flexibility into the way a company can utilise the available input tax credit. Any company would now be eligible to use credit available against paid integrated GST (IGST) to set off tax liabilities of state GST (SGST) and central GST (CGST) in any proportion and in any order. Traders also remained positive, as the Finance Ministry introduced several changes in the electronic way or e-way bill system, ranging from auto calculation of distance based on PIN codes for generation of e-way bill to barring businesses from generating multiple e-way bills based on one invoice, as it seeks to cracks down evasion in the GST framework. However, in the last hours of the trade, key indices failed to hold their heads in green terrain and turned negative to end the trading session in red terrain, on the account of weak cues from global markets. Trading sentiments worsened amid a private report stating that Indians are becoming increasingly worried about the economy's condition, with fewer citizens believing that the local economy is getting better. Adding more worries among market participants, the World Bank forecasted slowdown in East Asia and Pacific economies in 2019. Growth of East Asia and the Pacific (EAP) will remain at 6.0 per cent in 2019, which is down from 6.3 per cent in 2018. Different factors marred slow growth in major economies which suffered due to economic policies. Finally, the BSE Sensex slipped 323.82 points or 0.83% to 38,730.86, while the CNX Nifty was down by 84.35 points or 0.72% to 11,641.80.