In the Indian stock market, the Nifty futures closed at 22,652 points on Thursday, suggesting a gap-up start for the market indices, and Gift Nifty was trading at a premium of about 100 points.
The trends on Gift Nifty point to a higher opening for the domestic equity indices, Sensex and Nifty 50, on Monday in the Indian stock market, which is forecast to see mixed global market cues.
Last week, US stock market indices closed in the negative, treasury yields fell, and the currency fell alongside mixed trading in Asian markets.
Thursday saw a positive tilt among the Indian stock market indices as they ended flat. The Nifty 50 reached a new high above the 22,500 zone during the day. Friday was a public holiday, hence no domestic equities market activity occurred.
At 74,119.39, the Sensex gained 33.40 points, or 0.05%, and the Nifty 50 finished at 22,493.55, up 19.50 points, or 0.09%.
Now that attention is turning to important economic data, market players will be watching for a number of stock market triggers, such as the publication of inflation data from the US and India, electoral announcements leading up to the 2024 general election, inflows of foreign capital, and other global indications.
What happens at the European Central Bank’s interest rate meeting and with the US non-farm payroll numbers will serve as signals for investors. Market mood would also be driven by the second set of economic data. According to Siddhartha Khemka, Head – Retail Research at Motilal Oswal Financial Services Ltd., the current rise is concentrated on large caps, thus we anticipate that the Nifty 50 will reach 22,700 – 22,750 in the coming days.
After Wall Street lost ground on Monday, Asian stock markets did the same. After reaching an eight-month high on Friday, the MSCI’s largest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan declined 0.3%.
The Topix sank 1.33% and the Nikkei 225 fell 2.07% in Japan. The Kosdaq traded slightly lower, while the South Korean Kospi fell 1.39 percent. The futures for Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index pointed to a little better start.
The Indian stock market indices got off to a gap-up start as Gift Nifty traded around 22,652 points, a premium of about 100 points from the Nifty futures’ Thursday finish.
After reaching session highs, the US stock market indices closed Friday down as chip stocks retraced and mixed labor market data was released.
After a gain of 0.18 percent, the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 68.66 points to 38,722.69 and the S&P 500 fell 33.67 points, or 0.65 percent, to 5,123.69. The Nasdaq Composite closed at 16,085.11, down 188.26 points, or 1.16%.
S&P 500, Nasdaq, and Dow all had weekly declines of 0.26 percent, 1.17 percent, and 0.93 percent, respectively.
Stocks in Nvidia fell 5.6% by the end of the day, Broadcom fell 7%, and Marvell Technology fell 11.4%.
Thanks to updated figures showing GDP rose at an annualized pace of 0.4% in the October-December quarter, Japan narrowly avoided entering a technical recession in the second half of 2023. This was an improvement over the initial estimate of a 0.4% drop.
After a negative growth of 0.8% in the third quarter, this turned around an earlier preliminary projection for a 0.1% decline. A Reuters survey of economists had predicted an increase of 1.1%.
The US jobless rate hit a two-year high in February, despite the acceleration of job growth. There was a 275,000-job gain in nonfarm payrolls last month, even though the economy added 167,000 fewer jobs in January and December than expected. In February, 200,000 new jobs were expected, according to economists surveyed by Reuters.
A two-year high of 3.9% was reached by the US unemployment rate in February, following three consecutive months of 3.7%, while monthly wage growth slowed to 0.1%.
According to statistics, Chinese consumer prices increased in February after a long decline that began in August. A 0.7% gain in China’s consumer price index was recorded last month, surpassing the 0.3% increase anticipated by Bloomberg’s experts and a significant improvement from the 0.8% decline observed in January.
According to US Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell, the central bank is “not far” from finding the confidence it needs to start decreasing interest rates due to declining inflation. Powell stated, “I think we are in the right place” when asked about the present state of monetary policy during a hearing before the Senate Banking Committee.
When we have more evidence that inflation is declining steadily to 2%, then we will act. In order to avoid plunging the economy into recession, he stated that it would be prudent to start reducing the level of restriction once trust was restored, which is within reach.
This week, the US will provide inflation data, while OPEC and the IEA will release studies that could provide insight into the demand forecast. Crude oil prices continued their slide. West Texas Intermediate fell 0.74 percent to $77.43 per barrel, and Brent futures down 0.67 percent to $81.53 per barrel, following a 1.1% lower ending on Friday.