After Jan jolt, Feb fear!

The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents.- HP Lovecraft

Watching global cues and expecting Indian indices to mimic the same has been the usual routine. But the start of the year has seen the main Indian indices plunge 10% making it among the worst performers in Emerging Markets. Meanwhile, it was a different story on Wall Street as the Dow clocked its best January since 1997.



So what’s the fuss about Egypt now? Its not an oil exporter to begin with and controls just about 2% of the world's oil supply. But oil prices continue to move higher with Crude prices spiking to multi-year highs and Brent crude surging to $100 a barrel on Monday. Back home, domestic oil firms hiked jet fuel prices by as much as 4.5%.

After staging a comeback of sorts and paring losses, the Indian indices look set to see some green. The global cues seem to point at a better start. For the day, investors will keep a close eye on the auto and cement numbers besides the Manufacturing PMI data.

The Asian stocks have risen for the first time in three days. US stocks also posted solid gains on Monday. The sentiment remains weak though and any recovery must not be seen as a complete change in trend.

The BSE will provide delivery-based trading in single stock futures and options in its derivatives segment from today, expiring on or after April 13, 2011. SEBI had allowed the introduction of physical delivery in equity derivatives. There will be no change in other contract specifications.

Settlements for stock futures and stock options will be delivery-based with the exercise style of stock options being European — that is, they can be exercised only on the date of expiry. This effectively means that all open positions at expiry will result in delivery obligations.

The dollar fell against the euro, the British pound and the Japanese yen.

Gold futures for April delivery fell $7.20 to $1,334.50 a troy ounce.

In other news:

Nirma Ltd today said that it has fixed the offer price for acquisition of shares held by the public at Rs 260 apiece, following which the company will delist from the bourses.

Siemens Ltd share price zoomed after its German parent – Siemens AG – made a voluntary open offer to acquire 6.68 crore shares or 19.82 per cent at a price of Rs 930 a share (payable in cash) on Monday.

Posco's $12-billion project in Orissa received conditional clearance from the Ministry of Environment and Forests on Monday. The provisional nod comes nearly six years after the project was first announced.