Stocks likely to start weak

Headlines for the day:

Ranbaxy to launch 100 new products this year

Govt may sell stake in IOC by March

Events for the day:

Major corporate action

Tara Health Foods IPO opens today
Maithan Alloys to consider bonus issue
Tarapur Transformers IPO closes today
Results: Bank of Baroda, Dabur, Bharti Airtel
For more events, log on to Sharekhan.com

Pre-market report

Global signals

The European shares fell at their fastest rate in five months on Tuesday, weighed by ratings agency Standard & Poor's downgrade of Greek and Portuguese debt.

The US equities tumbled Tuesday with stocks posting their worst day in the last three months after downgrades of Greece and Portugal fueled fears of stability of the euro-zone nations.

In today's trade, the Asian markets were trading on a negative note. At the time of writing this report, SGX Nifty was trading 69 points lower.

Indian markets

The downgrade of Greece and Portugal by the credit rating agency Standard & Poor's has feared the euro zone's debt problems and that has resulted in sell-off across the globe. Owing to this, the Indian equities may open gap-down and remain negative for rest of the day. Ahead of the Federal rate meet decision to be announced today and the F&O expiry tomorrow, the market is expected to remain volatile. The dollar depreciation against the rupee will be good for the Indian market, which offers the higher growth doubled with rupee appreciation that augers well for the investors in US. This must have triggered the heavy buying by the foreign institutional investors (FIIs) post the budget.

Commodity cues

In the commodity space, the crude oil prices plunged over 2% after Greece and Portugal's debt downgrade fueled concerns, with the Nymex light crude oil for the May series down by $1.76 per barrel, whereas in the metals space, the Comex Gold for the May series rose by $8.20 and the Comex Silver for the May series was down by $0.22 to a troy ounce respectively.

Daily trend of FII/MF investment in equities

On April 27, 2010, the FIIs were the net buyers of the Indian stocks to the tune of Rs565.80 crore, whereas the domestic mutual funds, on April 26, 2010, were the net sellers of the stocks to the tune of Rs28.80 crore.