Markets to open positive on strong global cues

Headlines for the day

Nissan scouts for yet another Indian partner

Banks commit over Rs 10,000 crore to Hindalco plant

Birla to fight wadia on Worli land makeover

Events for the day

Major corporate action

Ex-date for final dividend of Arihant Foundations & Housing

Ex-date for interim dividend of Best Eastern Hotels

Persistent Systems IPO opens today

Pre-market report

Global signals

On Tuesday, March 16, 2010, European markets closed higher gaining all its previous session losses, after Standard & Poor's affirmed its credit ratings on Greece's debt.

The US markets rose to a fresh 17-month high on Tuesday after the Federal Reserve held benchmark rates near zero and maintained its pledge to keep them low for an extended period.

In today's trade, all the Asian indices are trading in the positive territory. At the time of writing this report, SGX Nifty was trading 32.50 points higher.

Indian markets

The Indian equities are set to open higher and extend gains from the previous session on the back of strong global markets after the US Federal Reserve maintained benchmark rates near zero. The market volatility is expected to remain low and the Nifty would trade in the limited range bound of 5092-5300.

Commodity cues

In the commodity space, the Crude oil prices posted gain after the two straight session of losses, with the Nymex light crude oil for the April series up by $1.90 per barrel, whereas in the metals space, the Comex Gold for the April series was up by $17.10 and the Comex Silver and May series was up by $0.25 to a troy ounce respectively.

Daily trend of FII/MF investment in equities

The foreign institutional investors (FIIs) were the net buyers of the Indian stocks to the tune of Rs388.90 crore on March 15, 2010, whereas the domestic mutual funds, on March 12, 2010, were the net sellers of the stocks to the tune of Rs116.60 crore.