Pre Session Commentary - July 17 2009

Today domestic markets are likely to open positive. The US markets extended their gains in the last night session as JP Morgan Chase reported better than expected earnings and also on a macro economic front the Initial claims for the week ending July 11 came in at 522,000, which is the lowest since January. There are sings of some resurgence in the US markets and therefore one could witness some firmness across Asian markets. The northward movement in domestic arena would be grappled by some profit booking pressures.

On Thursday Domestic markets closed flat note as investors booked profits following steep rise in previous two sessions. However, market exhibited positive attitude during early trading on overnight rise in US stocks. Further, concerns regarding the inflation data and the negative opening of European markets hit the sentiments. Meanwhile, inflation stood at (-) 1.21% for the week ended July 4 against (-) 1.55% during the previous week mainly due to higher prices of fuel items. BSE Sensex ended around 14,250 level and NSE Nifty closed below 4,250 mark. From the sectoral front, Capital Goods, Metal and Power stocks witnessed most of the selling from these baskets. However, Auto, Oil & Gas, Consumer Durables, Pharma and Teck stocks were able to gain favour from the market. BSE Mid Caps and Small Caps stocks also observed buying. Today markets are likely to trade range bound.

The BSE Sensex closed slightly lower by 2.99 points at 14,250.25 and NSE Nifty ended marginally down by 2.10 points at 4,231.40. BSE Mid Caps and Small Caps closed with gains of 11.78 and 21.76 points at 4,990.42 and 5,545.56 respectively. The BSE Sensex touched intraday high of 14,493.10 and intraday low of 14,169.58.

Thursday, the US stocks markets closed higher on the back of some better than expected results from JP Morhan Chase, IBM and Google. This marks a fourth day rally for the markets. However the stocks were trading in sideways for most of the session but a follow through buying latter in the session helped offset weakness among financials. JPMorgan Chase posted a better-than-expected second quarter earnings due to strength in its core consumer and investment banking businesses offset a jump in credit losses. Second-quarter net income rose to $2.72 billion from $2 billion a year earlier, while net revenue jumped 41 per cent to $27.71 billion. The bank said it set aside $9.7 billion for credit losses, up from $4.29 billion a year earlier but down from the first quarter''s $10.07 billion. US light crude oil futures for August delivery closed at $62.02 per barrel up by 0.8% on the New York Mercantile Exchange. The crude prices finished modestly higher after trading in negative territory during the most of the session.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) advanced by 95.61 points at 8,711.82, NASDAQ index gained 22.13 points to 1,885.03 and the S&P 500 (SPX) grew by 8.06 points to close at 940.74 points.

Today major stock markets in Asia are trading mixed. Hang Seng is up by 213.90 points at 18,575.77. Shanghai Composite is low by 3.716 points at 3,180.026. Japan''s Nikkei is trading up by 63.41 points at 9,407.57. Strait Times is up by 1.56 points at 2,402.58. Seoul Composite is up by 3.84 points at 1,436.06 and KLSE Composite is up by 11.64 points at 1,108.88.

Indian ADRs ended mixed on Thursday. In the IT space, Satyam Computers was up 5.4%, Infosys was up 0.78%, Wipro was up 3.77% and Patni Computers was up 2.46%. In the telecom space, MTNL was up 1.03% while Tata Communication was down 1.21%. In the banking space, ICICI Bank was down 1.51% and HDFC Bank was down 0.52%. In other sectors, Tata Motors was up 0.47% while Sterlite Industries was down 13.45% and Dr Reddy''s Labs was down 0.69%

The FIIs on Thursday stood as net buyers in equity and net sellers in debt. Gross equity purchased stood at Rs 2,887.50 Crore and gross debt purchased stood at Rs 61.60 Crore while the gross equity sold stood at Rs 1,856.50 Crore and gross debt sold stood at Rs 112.40 Crore. Therefore, the net investment of equity reported was Rs 1,031.00 Crore and net debt was Rs (50.80) Crore.

On BSE, total number of shares traded were 43.11 Crore and total turnover stood at Rs 6,573.37 Crore. On NSE, total number of shares traded were 102.70 Crore and total turnover was Rs 19,783.87 Crore.

Top traded volumes on NSE Nifty – Unitech with total volume traded 61825224 shares, followed by Suzlon Energy with 55406274, Tata steel with 17033930, DLF Bank with 13339823 and SAIL with 12661027 shares.

On NSE Future and Options, total number of contracts traded in index futures was 832358 with a total turnover of Rs 17,011.57 Crore. Along with this total number of contracts traded in stock futures were 643731 with a total turnover of Rs 18,437.82 crore. Total numbers of contracts for index options were 1467779 with a total turnover of Rs 31,533.32 Crore and total numbers of contracts for stock options were 62634 and notional turnover was Rs 1,864.58 Crore.

Today, Nifty would have a support at 4,218 and resistance at 4,298 and BSE Sensex has support at 14,269 and resistance at 14,410.