Monday, April 7, 2008

Pre Session Market

The Indian Market is likely to have a positive opening today as the Asian market is trading in green. On Friday, the Indian market closed on a deep red note on the back of surge in inflation to a three year high to 7% for the 12 months ended 22 March 2008, as against last week''s rise of 6.68%. This led to the concern of monetary tightening by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) following a surge in inflation and has triggered fears that RBI my raise cash reserve ratio (CRR). Heavy selling was witnessed across the sectoral indices. From the sectoral indices, Capital goods, Oil & Gas and bankex indices scrips faced the heavy selling across the counters. The BSE Sensex closed lower by 489.43 points at 15,343.12 and NSE Nifty fell by 124.6 points at 4,647. We expect that the market may remain volatile during the trading session.

On Friday, the US market closed mixed. The Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) closed lower by 20.20 points at 12,609.42 while Nasdaq and S&P 500 (SPX) index closed up by 7.68 points and 1.09 points at 2,370.98 and 1,370.40 respectively.

Today the major stock markets in Asia are trading strong. Hang Seng is trading is trading higher by 224.64 points at 24,489.27 along with Japan’s Nikkei trading up by 57.17 points at 13,350.39 and Taiwan Weighted trading at 8,669.25 up by 72.91 points.

The FIIs on Friday stood as net seller both in equity as well as debt. The gross equity purchased was Rs2,761.30 Crore and the gross debt purchased was Rs0.00 Crore while the gross equity sold stood at Rs3,304.20 Crore and gross debt sold stood at Rs489.40 Crore. Therefore, the net investment of equity reported was (Rs543 Crore) and net debt was (Rs489.40 Crore).

Inflation extended to an over three-year high of 7 per cent, defense fears that the RBI could increase rates in April instead of leaving them unchanged, denting economic growth prospects further. With iron and steel, edible oils, vegetables, milk and dairy products showing no signs of a let up in prices, annual inflation increased by over 30 basis points for the week ended March 22, driven by an across-the-board increase in prices, according to the latest Wholesale Price Index-based inflation data released by the Government. Fears of a slowdown in economic growth following the release of the increase in inflation numbers brought the Sensex down by over 480 points. Prices of edible oil and oilseeds in the futures market fell sharply during the day amid concerns that the Centre likely to ban their trading, while Government bond prices nosedived after the data came in.

Inflation, which stood at 6.54% in the same period one year ago, had last touched seven per cent on December 4, 2004. During the latest reported week, wholesale prices in the iron and steel category were up 27 per cent on a year-on-year basis, while edible oils shot up 21 per cent. Among essential items, cereal prices jumped 6 per cent, vegetable prices were up 11% while milk prices spurted 10 per cent in the wholesale markets. Dairy products were up 9 per cent, while cement prices were up 5% during the latest reported week. In the fuels category, both mineral oil and coal prices were up 9 per cent on an annual basis.

Today, Nifty has support at 4,528 and resistance at 4,746 and BSE Sensex has support at 15,017 and resistance at 15,789.

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