Indian markets to start positive

Headlines for the day:

Godrej Consumer Products buys Indonesian Megasari—Business Standard

Sebi brings down listing time for IPOs to 12 days—DNA Money

Jindal Power raises Rs10,057-cr loan for Chhattisgarh plant—Business Standard

Events for the day:

Major corporate action

Ex-date for stock split from Rs10 to Rs2 of Unity Infraprojects
Ex-date for final dividend of Aventis Pharma
For more events, log on to Sharekhan.com
Results: Allcargo Global Logistics

Pre-market report

Global signals

The European stock market closed firmer on Tuesday, catching-up on solid US economic data and digesting the announcement of a general election for May 6 in Britain after a long Easter holiday weekend.

The US markets ended the session on a flat note. The Dow Jones closed at 10969, lower by three points, Nasdaq ended at 2436, higher by seven points and S&P shut at 1189, up two points.

In today's trade, the Asian markets were trading in the positive territory, except Shanghai Composite. At the time of writing this report, SGX Nifty was trading 16 point higher.

Indian markets

The Indian indices may continue their recent rally, after taking a breather yesterday owing to persisting strong global cues. The markets to open firm and expected to trade in a range-bound through the day in the absence of any fresh triggers. It is also likely to witness a sideway trend and would consolidate before heading for a fresh rally. Profit booking is also expected at higher levels.

Commodity cues

In the commodity space, the crude oil prices posted gains, with the Nymex light crude oil for the May series advanced by $0.22 per barrel, whereas in the metals space, the Comex Gold for the May series rose by $2.20 and the Comex Silver for the May series was down by $0.18 to a troy ounce respectively.

Daily trend of FII/MF investment in equities

The FIIs still continue to be pumping money in the Indian market as on April 06, 2010 and were the net buyers of the Indian stocks to the tune of Rs970.50 crore, whereas the domestic mutual funds, on March 30, 2010, were the net sellers of the stocks to the tune of Rs100.20 crore