Markets to get a positive start of new week; Nifty to regain 6000 level

The Indian markets, after a slew of gains lost their track on Friday, disappointed by the hawkish tone of the RBI in its annual monetary policy review. Today, the start of the new week is likely to be in green, tailing the good global cues and Nifty may regain its 6000 mark in early deals. Though, there is likely to be some cautiousness as well, as global credit rating agency Standard & Poor's has ruled out rating upgrade for India at the current juncture, however it has also said that India could maintain a sustainable 7-8% growth rate if it is able to bring down its fiscal and current account deficits (CAD) to 3% of GDP level. There will be some buzz in the gold and banking stocks, as the RBI in its bid to stem runaway gold imports has suggested that banks should not aggressively sell gold products at their branches. There will be some action in power sector too, as the power Minister Jyotiraditya Scindia has said that the country's electricity generation capacity will surge to nearly 315 gigawatts by fiscal year 2016-17 with an estimated investment of about Rs 5 lakh crore.

There will be lots of important result announcements to keep the markets ticking. Adani Power, South Indian Bank, State Bank of Bikaner & Jaipur and GE Shipping will be among the many to announce their numbers today.

The US markets rallied on Friday on getting better than expected jobs data, unemployment rate too fell to its lowest in more than four years. The Asian markets have made a positive start and some are even trading higher by over a percent led by gains in the mining stocks, though Japanese market is shut today on account of Children's Day.

Back home, Stock markets in India staged an unenthusiastic performance on the last trading session of the first week of new F&O series as the frontline equity gauges shed about a percent after amassing over two percentage points in the last three sessions on back of profit-booking in rate sensitive sectors such as banks, real-estate and auto after the central bank’s policy action. The benchmark gauges, which traded with huge volatility, drifted lower for the first time in last four trading sessions and settled near their intraday low, breaching  the psychological 19,600 (Sensex) and 5,950 (Nifty) levels as investors took to largely across the board profit booking. Sentiments in the session got undermined after Reserve Bank of India (RBI) in its monetary policy review reduced repo rates by much-anticipated 25 basis points but hinted towards a little room for future policy easing. However, the central bank kept Cash Reserve Ratio (CRR) unchanged. In the annual monetary policy for 2013-14, RBI also cut the ceiling on total SLR securities held under the HTM category to 23 per cent of net demand and time liabilities (NDTL) from 25 per cent earlier. However, global cues remained supportive as European counters traded firmly in the early deals after ECB President Mario Draghi on April 2, 2013 said the ECB stood ready to ease further if needed, dealing a blow to the euro currency as investors looked elsewhere for better returns. Back home, selling in the late trade intensified after investors continued offloading their holdings in rate sensitive counters viz. banking, realty and auto after the RBI said there is little room to ease monetary policy further. RBI has also warned that the risk of inflationary pressure persists despite a recent sharp decline in wholesale price index (WPI) inflation, and said a high current account deficit poses the biggest risk by far to the Indian economy. Bucking the trend, software and technology pack witnessed some traction during the trade after Indian rupee depreciated 17 paise to 53.98 against the dollar on the Interbank Foreign Exchange market due to appreciation of the US currency against other currencies overseas. The dollar’s movement affects the IT index as US is the biggest market for the IT service industry. Finally, the BSE Sensex lost 160.13 points or 0.81% to settle at 19,575.64, while the CNX Nifty declined by 55.35 points or 0.92% to end at 5,944.00.