PremiumMUMBAI: Markets are likely to be volatile on Friday while trends in SGX Nifty suggest a marginally higher opening of Indian benchmark indices. On Thursday, the BSE Sensex ended at 53,158.85, up 254.80 points or 0.48%. The Nifty closed at 15,924.20, up 70.25 points or 0.44%.
Asian stocks and US equity futures dipped Friday amid concerns about the economic growth outlook and coronavirus flareups in some parts of the world. Treasuries and the dollar held advances.
Shares posted modest drops in Japan, China and Hong Kong. US contracts slipped after energy and technology sectors led Wall Street lower. Moderna Inc. rallied in extended trading on an announcement that the vaccine maker is set to join the S&P 500.
Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell overnight defended the central bank’s accommodative stance in the face of uncomfortably high inflation. Officials expect a transient surge in price pressures amid the reopening from the pandemic, but some others fear stickier inflation that could hurt economic prospects. The 10-year Treasury yield is set for a third weekly retreat.
HDFC Asset Management Company, L&T Finance Holdings and Just Dial are among the company that will announce quarterly earnings today.
Wipro reported a 35.6% jump in its consolidated net profit in June quarter. Its revenue from operations increased by 22.3%. Wipro said it expects revenues from IT services - to be in the range of $2,535 million to $2,583 million in the September 2021 quarter, which translates into a sequential growth of 5-7%.
Bandhan Bank witnessed an 8% rise in its loans and advances to ₹80,128 crore in the June quarter this fiscal, as per provisional data. The loans and advances during the same period of 2020 stood at ₹74,331 crore. Compared sequentially, it was down by 8% from ₹87,043 crore in the March quarter, Bandhan Bank said in a release on Thursday.
Life Insurance Corp. of India (LIC), which is working on the biggest public share sale in the country, booked record stock market profit of over ₹10,000 crore in the April-June period, according to a Mint report. State-owned LIC, the largest insurer in the country, is also the biggest domestic investor in Indian markets, buying shares worth ₹94,000 crore in FY21 to reach a total stock market investment of Rs8 trillion at the end of the fiscal year.
Crude oil steadied but was on course for the biggest weekly decline since mid-March, hurt by virus flareups and amid uncertainty over an OPEC+ deal to boost supply. New Zealand’s dollar jumped after the nation’s inflation breached the central bank’s target range, reinforcing bets on an interest-rate increase.
Global stocks remain near record levels but face risks such as an eventual tapering in Fed bond purchases, Covid-19 delta-variant outbreaks and some signs of peaking economic and corporate earnings momentum
Powell has said the U.S. recovery has some way to go before the central bank can start tapering economic support and that it’s closely watching inflation. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said she expects “several more months of rapid inflation" while adding expectations for price gains still look well contained.
Elsewhere, the Biden administration is set to issue an advisory cautioning U.S. companies about the risks of doing business in Hong Kong as China tightens its control over the island, the latest chapter in the ongoing tension between Washington and Beijing.
(Bloomberg contributed to the story)
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