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Indian markets witnessed selling pressure and settled deeply in red on Thursday amid global growth worries and fears of sustained FII outflows. Today, benchmarks are likely to make gap-up opening taking positive cues from global markets amid growing investor optimism about slower hikes in benchmark interest rates in US. Investors will be looking ahead to the Services PMI data to be out later in the day for more cues. Traders will be taking encouragement as Chief Economic Advisor V Anantha Nageswaran expressed hope that the GDP growth for the current financial year will exceed the projected 7 per cent in view of the expected revision of high frequency data. Nageswaran said the rising interest rates need not necessarily be a cause of lower growth but simply reflects the fact that there is healthy underlying demand for credit. Some optimism may come with Commerce and industry minister Piyush Goyal’s statement that PM GatiShakti national master plan and logistics policy together will help improve competitiveness of businesses and attract investments into India. Some support will come with report that the Centre has taken steps to enhance exports by micro, small and medium enterprises (MSME) sector by setting up facilitation centers across the country. Foregin fund inflows likely to aid domestic sentiments. Foreign institutional investors (FII) bought shares worth Rs 12,770.81 crore on March 2, the National Stock Exchange’s provisional data showed. Power stocks will be in focus as Crisil in its latest report said that power prices are expected to remain firm next fiscal on the back of elevated demand growth of 5.5-6 per cent, and the demand is set to close this fiscal up 9.5-10 per cent over 8.2 per cent last fiscal. There will be some reaction in solvent extraction industry stocks with a private report that India's February palm oil imports dropped 30% from January to their lowest in 8 months as refiners preferred to lower their stocks as inventories piled up following excessive imports during October-January. Agriculture industry stocks will be in limelight as the government fixed a wheat procurement target of 34.15 million tonnes for the 2023-24 marketing year starting April, higher than 18.79 million tonnes purchased in the previous year.

The US markets ended higher on Thursday after Federal Reserve's Atlanta President Raphael Bostic said that he is in favor of quarter-point hikes. Asian markets are trading mostly in green on Friday following Wall Street’s gains overnight.

Back home, Indian equity benchmarks succumbed to selling pressure on Thursday amid global growth worries. TECK, IT and Banking stocks were the major draggers. Markets opened on a weak note and continued to drift lower throughout the day as sentiments remained down-beat with Chief Economic Advisor V Anantha Nageswaran’s statement that the performance of the manufacturing sector and growth rate in private consumption expenditure in the December quarter of 2022-23 is appearing ‘depressed’ because of higher base. Continued foreign fund outflows dented domestic sentiments. Foreign Portfolio Investors (FPIs) again offloaded shares worth Rs 424.88 crore on Wednesday, according to exchange data.   Traders overlooked a private report stating that India's FY24 GDP growth is likely to be higher than the threshold 6 per cent. It also said private final consumption expenditure (PFCE) is expected to increase to Rs 164 lakh crore in FY23 (2022-23), with the yearly growth moderating to 14.8 per cent. Traders also paid no heed towards Moody's Investors Service’s report that the banking sector outlook remains stable and is supported by economic growth and improved financials. It said ‘while we expect the country's real GDP growth to moderate in the fiscal year ending March 2024 (fiscal 2024), India's underlying growth potential is fundamentally strong, which will support banks' credit growth and asset quality.’ Finally, the BSE Sensex fell 501.73 points or 0.84% to 58,909.35 and the CNX Nifty was down by 129.00 points or 0.74% to 17,321.90.

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