Sensex, Nifty may see negative start today; key things to know before opening bell

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Benchmark equity indices BSE Sensex and NSE Nifty are likely to make a negative start amid lacklustre cues from Asian peers. Traders will be concerned as S&P Global cut its growth forecasts for some of Asia’s top economies including India, the Philippines and Malaysia, offsetting upgrades to China and South Africa and much of Latin America.

The estimates, which feed into S&P’s closely-followed sovereign ratings, saw India’s growth projection chopped to 9.5% from 11% due to its COVID-19 outbreak. However, some respite may come later in the day as Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman announced the much-awaited fiscal package to revive the economy ravaged by the second pandemic wave, keeping the fiscal outgo limited for the current year.

The Rs 6.28 lakh crore package included a new credit guarantee scheme for health, tourism and micro borrowers, besides expanding the Emergency Credit Line Guarantee Scheme (ECLGS) by half to Rs 4.5 lakh crore and extending the Aatmanirbhar Bharat Rozgar Yojana. The government announced Rs 1.1 lakh crore loan guarantees for pandemic-affected sectors.

Of that Rs 50,000 crore will be for scaling up medical infrastructure in non-metropolitan cities. Traders may take some encouragement as witnessing a sharp decline, India recorded 37,037 fresh Covid-19 cases in the last 24 hours with 907 fatalities, Worldometer showed.

Some support may also come as Chief Economic Advisor Krishnamurthy Subramanian said the target of mopping up Rs 1.75 lakh crore from disinvestments of some of the public sector companies, including LIC and BPCL during the current fiscal, is on track and groundwork is being prepared for the goal.

Travel sector stocks will be in focus as the Centre announced free visas for 500,000 tourists and a loan guarantee scheme to support recognised tour operators and tourist guides whose business has been disrupted due to Covid-19 pandemic. There will be some reaction in oil & gas industry stocks with a report that India’s natural gas producers expect some cheer as the domestic gas price is set to rise after having fallen for two consecutive years.

The US markets ended mostly higher on Monday fuelled by tech stocks as investors expect a robust earnings season while interest rates remain low.

Back home, Indian equity benchmarks ended in red on Monday led by losses in index heavyweights Titan Company, TCS, HCL Technologies and Reliance Industries. The BSE Sensex fell 189.45 points or 0.36% to 52,735.59, while the NSE Nifty settled 45.65 points or 0.29% lower at 15,814.70.