Pre Session Commentary - Feb 21 2008

The Indian Market is likely to have a positive opening due to strong favoring cues from the global markets. On Wednesday, the market closed the trading session with heavy losses on the back of more selling pressures across the sectoral indices. The domestic market opened with heavy gap down by taking the negative cues from the Asian markets as well as due to rising crude oil price above $100 a barrel, which adds to the sentiments. Then after the market keeps on drifting down further till the closing of the session as the selling pressures prevailed. The Securities and Exchange Board of India has recommended that the face value of shares will be made Re.1 in two phases. In the first phase, all the forthcoming companies coming out with IPO to be priced at a face value of Re1 and in the second phase all the listed companies having the face value of more than Re1 will be asked to bring it down. This recommendation would be discussed at the next Sebi board meeting. The BSE Sensex closed lower by 458.06 points at 17,617.60 and NSE Nifty fell by 126.35 points at 5,154.45.We expect that the market may gain some during the trading session. On Wednesday, the US market was closed in green. The Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) closed higher by 90.04 points at 12,427.26. S&P 500 index fell by 11.25 points to close at 1,360.03 and NASDAQ dropped by 20.90 points to close at 2,327.10.

Indian ADRs closed mixed. In technology sector, Wipro grew by (0.87%) along with Infosys by (0.49%) and Satyam (0.34%). In banking sector, HDFC bank grew by (1.20%) while ICICI bank fell by (0.77%). MTNL increased by (0.32%).

Today, the major stock markets in Asia are trading strong. Hang Seng is trading higher by 333.02 points at 23,923.60 along with Japan''s Nikkei trading up by 282.14 points at 13,592.51 and Taiwan weighted is trading at 8,031.18 up by 136.71 points.

Today, Nifty has support at 5,091 and resistance at 5,259 and BSE Sensex has support at 17,327 and resistance at 18,168.