Indian equities may open lower

Headlines for the day:

R-Infra hits out at Tata Power

IOC to market bio-lubricant next year

M&M starts work on electric two-wheelers

Events for the day:

Major corporate action

Weekly inflation to be announced today
Ex-date for stock split from Rs10 to Re1 of Tatia Global
Results: ACC, Nestle India, Ambuja Cements, MahinFin
For more events, log on to Sharekhan.com

Pre-market report

Global signals

The European shares fell on Wednesday, led by banking stocks on investor concerns over how Greece will finance its debt as talks to hammer out details of a potential aid plan began.

The US stocks finished little changed on Wednesday as disappointing outlooks from healthcare companies offset strong earnings from Morgan Stanley and Apple Inc.

In today's trade, the Asian markets were trading in a negative territory. At the time of writing this report, SGX Nifty was trading 26 points lower.

Indian markets

After two days of gains, the market may open lower owing to the fairly negative global cues. Following into the session, weekly inflation along with the earnings of the companies may decide the course of the day. The FIIs inflow is a concern and their activity needs to be closely watched. The Sensex is currently trading at 21.09 times the earnings of its underlying 30 stocks earnings on TTM basis. This shows that the Sensex is currently trading above its fair valuation, thus we might not see much movement in the index levels. However, investment in the good value stocks can be considered.

Commodity cues

In the commodity space, the crude oil prices fell amid choppy trading on Wednesday after the government's inventory report dimmed trader hopes that demand is finally rebounding, with the Nymex light crude oil for the May series down by $0.17 per barrel, whereas in the metals space, the Comex Gold for the May series rose by $9.60 and the Comex Silver for the May series was up by $0.26 to a troy ounce respectively.

Daily trend of FII/MF investment in equities

On April 21, 2010, the FIIs were the net buyers of the Indian stocks to the tune of Rs32.50 crore, whereas the domestic mutual funds, on April 19, 2010, were the net buyers of the stocks to the tune of Rs101.90 crore.