IGI Logo

Indian markets pared morning gains and ended flat on Monday as losses in IT and metals offset gains in banks and auto stocks. Today, the markets are likely to make gap-up opening tracking firm global cues. Traders will be taking encouragement as data released by the government showed that India’s industrial production grew 29.3 per cent in May over the same period a year ago, as the impact of a favourable base continued for yet another month. Also, India's retail inflation eased slightly to 6.26 per cent in June, but stayed above the Reserve Bank's tolerance range (2 per cent-6 per cent) for the second straight month. Some support will come with a private report that the Indian economy is at the start of a virtuous cycle and on the path to becoming a $15 trillion economy over the next two decades. Traders may take note of another private report that even though the second wave of the pandemic and subsequent lockdowns affected the economic growth, the overall job postings have improved sequentially four per cent across various sectors. Meanwhile, India has recorded 30,827 fresh cases taking the total caseload to 30,904,734, according to Worldometer. The death count increased to 409,338 with 546 new fatalities, the data showed. There will be some buzz in the telecom stocks as latest TRAI data showed that Reliance Jio added 4.7 million users in April and its subscriber base swelled to 427.6 million. Vodafone Idea lost 1.8 million users and its subscriber base shrunk to 281.9 million in April, while Bharti Airtel added 0.51 million wireless customers and its user base rose marginally to 352.9 million. Media and entertainment (ME) industry stocks will be in focus with a private report that the country's ME sector will be the fastest growing globally in terms of both consumer and advertising spends, and will be an over-Rs 4-lakh-crore industry by 2025. There will be some reaction in NBFCs stocks with Crisil’s report that Non-banking finance companies (NBFCs) are better placed currently on the liquidity front than they were a year ago, enabling them to service their near debt without much difficulty, despite a fall in collections because of the second wave of Covid-19. There will be some result announcements to keep the markets in action.

The US markets ended higher on Monday as investors awaited the start of the second-quarter earnings season and a batch of economic data to gauge the next leg of the equity market. Asian markets are trading mostly in green on Tuesday as investors awaited the release of China's trade data for June.

Back home, Indian equity benchmarks wiped off morning gains to end flat on Monday, as investors awaited data on consumer price inflation (CPI) for June and industrial output for May. The benchmarks staged a gap up opening taking cues from positive global cues. Traders took encouragement with report stated that despite the worse condition due to COVID-19 which impacted economic growth, the net direct tax collection has doubled to over Rs 2.49 lakh crore so far this fiscal, mainly driven by personal income tax and advance tax mop up. Sentiments remained positive as the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) in its latest survey report stated that India’s economy is expected to see a swift recovery from the impact of the second wave of COVID-19 as lockdowns were largely designed to limit social gatherings and did not affect economic activities much. Some support also came as the Department of Economic Affairs (DEA) under the Ministry of Finance stated that the Indian economy is showing signs of revival from the second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic. It further added that healthy monsoon coverage, gradually rising Kharif sowing and unlocking of states are expected to ease inflation. However, benchmarks erased their gains and turned negative in late afternoon session amid reports that India's Covid caseload is on a downhill, but concerns over the Delta and Delta plus variants persist across the globe. Meanwhile, India has recorded 37,676 fresh cases taking the total caseload to 30,873,907, according to Worldometer. Finally, the BSE Sensex fell 13.50 points or 0.03% to 52,372.69, while the CNX Nifty was up by 2.80 points or 0.02% to 15,692.60.  

Above views are of the author and not of the website kindly read disclaimer