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Indian markets witnessed a range-bound trading session and ended flat on Tuesday with Capital Goods, Power and FMCG shares seeing buying, while IT and financial shares were out of favour. Today, start of the session is likely to be flat-to-positive amid mixed global cues. Traders continue to take support with Icra Ratings’ statement that India’s economic growth will accelerate to 8.5 per cent in the April-June period of the current fiscal from the 6.1 per cent growth rate witnessed in the preceding January-March quarter. The rating agency attributed the faster growth to a supportive base and also a recovery in the services sector. Some support will come as Prime Minister Narendra Modi said India will become the growth engine for the world in the coming years, and the ease of doing business in the country has improved through reforms undertaken by the government. He added the country will become a $5 trillion economy. However, foreign fund outflows likely to dent sentiments. provisional data from the National Stock Exchange (NSE) showed that foreign institutional investors (FII) sold shares worth Rs 495.17 crore on August 22. Some cautiousness may come as Economic Advisory Council to the Prime Minister (EAC-PM) Chairman Bibek Debroy said the government was losing revenue due to the GST, which should be revenue neutral with a single rate. Traders may take note of report that days after imposing a 40 percent export levy on onions to cool soaring prices, which triggered protests across the main growing belts, the central government has now decided to procure an additional 2 lakh tons of onions at Rs 2,410 per quintal for its buffer stock from farmers. Banking stocks will be in focus with a private report that the banking system's liquidity slipped into deficit for the first time in the current financial year (2023-24) due to the imposition of the Incremental Cash Reserve Ratio (I-CRR) for banks and outflows from goods and services tax (GST) payments. Reserve Bank of India (RBI) data shows it injected Rs 23,644 crore on August 21. Meanwhile, TVS Supply Chain Solutions will make its debut on the BSE and NSE today. The issue price has been fixed at Rs 197 per share. Moreover, BSE has announced the postponement of the removal of Jio Financial Services Ltd from all S&P BSE Indices from August 24 to August 29 after the stock hit the lower circuit for two days in a row.

The US markets ended mostly in red on Tuesday led by losses in banking and financial names after the S&P Global ratings agency revised outlook for multiple banks citing 'tough' operating conditions. Asian markets are trading mostly higher on Wednesday ahead of Nvidia's earnings results due later in the day and a speech from Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell on Friday.

Back home, Indian equity benchmarks erased their initial gains and ended flat with a positive bias in an extremely volatile session on Tuesday despite supportive global markets. Markets opened on a positive note and witnessed range bound day of trade as traders took support with a private report stating that the value of foreign portfolio investors' holdings in the domestic equities reached $626 billion in the three months ended June 2023, which was 20 per cent higher from the year-ago period. Some optimism also came with the latest payroll data released by the Employees’ Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO) showing that the number of fresh formal jobs increased for the third consecutive month in June to hit a 9-month high, thus signalling a sustained recovery in the labour markets in the first quarter of financial year 2023-24 (FY24). Sentiments remained positive in afternoon deals, taking support from Icra Ratings’ report stating that India’s economic growth will accelerate to 8.5 per cent in the April-June period of the current fiscal from the 6.1 per cent growth rate witnessed in the preceding January-March quarter. The rating agency attributed the faster growth to a supportive base and also a recovery in the services sector. Some support came as the global industry body WFDSA in a report said that India has moved up to 11th position in the ranking of top markets of direct sellers, with retail sales of USD 3.23 billion (around Rs 26,852 crore) in 2022. Besides, India and the 10-nation bloc Asean said they have directed their officials to intensify their efforts to conclude the review of the existing free trade agreement in goods between the two regions by 2025. However, gains got trimmed in the last leg of trade, as some anxiety remained among traders with think tank Global Trade Research Initiative (GTRI) stating that India’s exports and imports of goods and services declined 2.5% on-year in January-June 2023 at $800.9 billion. Some concern also came as the Finance Ministry in its report stated that global and regional uncertainties and domestic disruptions may keep inflationary pressures elevated in India for the coming months. Finally, the BSE Sensex rose 3.94 points or 0.01% to 65,220.03 and the CNX Nifty was up by 2.85 points or 0.01% to 19,396.45.

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