Market seen snapping Wednesday's gains; inflation data eyed

The market is seen opening lower today mirroring lower Asian markets. The S&P CNX Nifty futures for February 2010 expiry were trading 30 points lower in Singapore. US market ended little changed on Wednesday, 3 February 2010 on tepid reports on employment and the services sector.

The government will today unveil data on some wholesale price indices for the year through 23 January 2010 viz. the food price index, the primary articles index and the fuel price index.

ACC and Ambuja Cement will unveil their December 2009 quarterly earnings today, 4 February 2010.

Oil marketing and exploration stocks will see action on reports the Congress Working Committee is set to meet on Friday to discuss price rise of essential commodities. The meeting comes in the backdrop of Congress' attempts to express concern over price rise, which has aggravated in the last three months. An expert group headed by Kirit Parikh on Tuesday suggested freeing petrol and diesel prices as well as raising LPG rates by Rs 100 a cylinder and kerosene prices by Rs 6/litre. The Parikh committee's suggestions, submitted to petroleum minister Murli Deora, would see a hike of Rs 3/litre in petrol and Rs 3-4/litre in diesel if implemented.

Asian shares declined today after Australian retail sales unexpectedly fell in December and commodity prices declined. The key benchmark indices in China, Hong Kong, Japan, South Korea, Singapore and Taiwan were down by between 0.03% to 1.23%.

The US markets snapped a two-day winning streak on Wednesday after tepid reports on employment and the services sector. The indices ended on a mixed note. The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed at 10,270.55, down 26.30 points or 0.26% and the S&P 500 Index closed just shy of the 1100 mark, shed 6.04 points or 0.55% to 1,097.28. The Nasdaq Composite closed flat at 2,190.91, up 0.85 points.

In US economic news, the ISM Non-Manufacturing index rose to 50.5 in January from 49.8 in December, but fell short of expectations. On the jobs front, ADP reported that 22,000 jobs were lost from private payrolls in January.

Closer home, investors will closely watch the response to the large follow-on public offer (FPO) of state-run power generation firm NTPC which opened for bidding on Wednesday, 3 February 2010. The issue was subscribed 0.77 times on Wednesday. Most bids were at Rs 209 per share. The government has fixed the benchmark price for the proposed divestment of government stake at Rs 201 per share.

The key benchmark indices surged on Wednesday as strong response to NTPC's follow-on public offer (FPO), robust services sector data for January 2010 and firm global stocks boosted investor sentiment. The BSE 30-share Sensex rose 332.61 points or 2.06%.

As per provisional figures on NSE, foreign funds sold shares worth Rs 455.01 crore and domestic funds bought shares worth Rs 41.93 crore on Tuesday.