India's blue-chips set to open higher; US inflation in focus
Technology
India’s GIFT Nifty was trading at 22,825.
BENGALURU (Reuters) -- India’s benchmark share indexes were seen opening higher on Wednesday amid continued expectations of a positive corporate earnings season, while focus turns to US inflation data due later in the day for clues on interest rate cuts.
India’s GIFT Nifty was trading at 22,825 as of 8:23 a.m. IST, indicating that the Nifty 50 will open above its Tuesday close of 22,642.75.
Both the Nifty and S&P BSE Sensex hit all-time highs in the last two sessions, but closed lower on Tuesday amid profit booking at record levels.
“Despite profit booking on Tuesday, we expect the uptrend to continue for domestic equities helped by healthy March quarter business updates, which has led to expectations of a positive results season” said Siddhartha Khemka, head of retail research at Motilal Oswal Financial Services.
Healthy financial updates from Nifty 50-listed companies like HDFC Bank, Tata Steel, Tata Motors have aided hopes of a positive earnings season.
India’s top IT services company Tata Consultancy Services will be the first Nifty 50 company to report its earnings on Friday, kickstarting the quarterly results season.
Domestic institutional investors (DII) have been net buyers of Indian shares in 22 of 26 sessions since the beginning of March, adding stocks worth 620.39 billion rupees (about $7.5 billion) in the period.
On Tuesday, DIIs net bought shares worth 22.57 billion rupees while foreign institutional investors net sold equities worth 5.93 billion rupees.
Asian stocks were muted as investors kept watch for possible intervention by Japanese authorities to stop the yen’s decline. Meanwhile, the Nasdaq and S&P 500 posted modest gains overnight, while the Dow Jones was essentially unchanged.
The US inflation data is expected to show a rise in headline inflation in February.
Recent strong economic data has dampened hopes of a rate cut in June, and a hotter-than-expected inflation data will likely add to worries of further delay.
