Markets likely to open in green on Wednesday

Indian markets recouped all intra-day losses in the dying hours of trade on Tuesday and managed to close with gains. Today, markets are likely to start session slightly in green amid mixed global cues. Traders will be taking encouragement with a private report that Indian GDP will grow at 8.5 per cent in 2021-22, and the rate will accelerate further to 9.8 per cent in 2022-23. Some support will come as Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman asserted that the government is tough on defaulters, particularly fugitives, getting back their assets through legal process and giving it to banks because of which their bad assets have come down. Besides, the Finance Ministry said the Centre has released two instalments of tax devolution to the states amounting to Rs 95,082 crore in November. Traders may take note of report that the Winter Session will consider cryptocurrency and regulation of digital currency bill, banking amendment bill, repeal of farm laws, IBC amendment bill. Meanwhile, the panel of state finance ministers looking into GST rate rationalisation will meet on November 27 and finalise its report on rate changes to expand the tax base. There will be some buzz in the Real Estate industry stocks with report that after being hit hard by Covid-19 due to scarcity of labour and low budget spending, India's real estate industry is now gathering pace and is on the course to healthy recovery. Oil & gas industry stocks will be in focus as India will release 5 million barrels of crude oil from its strategic petroleum reserves in a concerted effort to bring down global crude oil prices. Also, India's crude oil production fell 2.15 per cent in October as state-owned firms produced less but, natural gas output rose by a quarter on the back of output from KG-D6 fields of Reliance-BP. There will be some reaction in IT service industry stocks with a private report that Indian IT services sector is expected to see a gross employee addition of about 4.5 lakh in the second half of the fiscal ended March 2022.

The US markets ended mostly in green on Tuesday as investors positioned for a likely rate hike in 2022 after Powell's nomination for a second term. Asian markets are trading mostly in red on Wednesday with investors sceptical about a US-led plan for a coordinated release by several countries of strategic oil reserves.

Back home, Indian equity benchmarks made a comeback on Tuesday following four days of losses. Strength in metal, power and utilities shares led the rebound in the headline indices. Domestic stocks staged a gap down opening, as traders remained cautious as foreign institutional investors (FIIs) net sold shares worth Rs 3,438.76 crore in the Indian equity market on November 22. Some cautiousness also came with Crisil ratings report that the demand growth for petrol and diesel is going to be severely impacted due to push towards compressed natural gas (CNG), ethanol blending and electric vehicles. Traders also took a note of a senior RBI official witting on the rate-setting panel said that the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) should not continue with unconventional measures now, and it is possible to have lower liquidity levels while continuing with the growth-enhancing accommodative stance. But, frontline indices thereafter recouped losses and rebounded into the positive zone in noon deals, as some respite came in as an SBI research report stated that the country's GDP growth is likely to be around 8.1 per cent in the second quarter of the current financial year and in the range of 9.3-9.6 per cent during fiscal 2022. It added that in the first quarter of FY 22, the economy grew 20.1 per cent. Sentiments remained positive with Fitch Ratings’ report that the Centre could better its fiscal deficit at 6.6 per cent of GDP in this financial year (FY22) on stronger-than-expected revenue buoyancy, even if the budgeted disinvestment target is not met. In the 2021-22 (April-March) Budget presented on February 1, the government had pegged the fiscal deficit, or gap between the Centre's expenditure and revenue, at 6.8 per cent of GDP or Rs 15.06 lakh crore. Adding more optimism, the preliminary data of the commerce ministry showed that the country's exports rose 18.8 per cent to $20.01 billion during the three week period of this month (November 1-21), due to healthy growth in sectors such as petroleum products, engineering goods, chemicals and gems and jewellery. Finally, the BSE Sensex rose 198.44 points or 0.34% to 58,664.33 and the CNX Nifty was up by 86.80 points or 0.50% to 17,503.35.