Hong Kong: Another quiet, listless day of trading appears to lie ahead for Indian investors. Markets across the Asia-Pacific region began the day on a bright note, but most of the leading indices are coming off their morning highs; some of them have even turned negative.
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As at 7.30 am IST, Nifty futures are up by about three-tenths of 1 percent, trading around the 5315 mark. But they’re down lower from where they started this morning. After yesterday’s wild swings, when the Indian market gave back all of its early gains, evidently on worries about a deficient monsoon, we could be in for a bit of up-and-down movements.
A listless start to the trading day on mixed signals from overseas markets. Reuters
Across the region, indices are somewhat mixed. The hint of some tension over Iran led to an early spike in energy stocks, but banking stocks are down as the scandal surrounding Barclays’ Libor rate-fixing looks set to spread. Early trades on the indices are also volatile, which makes it difficult to read the market outlook with clarity.
Overnight, Wall Street finished higher on encouraging factory orders data for May, which helped shore up investor sentiment after the shocking PMI data on Monday, which pointed to a contraction in the manufacturing economy in the US. Market sentiment was also lifted up by expectations of monetary easing by European central banks on Thursday.
Back home, analysts are betting on policy action to drive up investor sentiment in July. Foreign institutional investors have also put down over Rs 1,500 crore on index futures, on the expectation that when European banks open the liquidity taps, the money will wash ashore in emerging markets.
The rupee’s strong gains on Tuesday are also feeding the cycle of relative optimism.
Overall, we’re likely looking at a mildly positive start to the trading day.
