Subdued start likely amid negative cues from Asian peers

The Indian stock markets are likely to make flat to negative start as underlying sentiment may remain cautious amid rising oil prices and negative cues from Asian peers. The SGX Nifty is trading 34 points lower at 10,707.  

Asian markets are mostly trading lower on Wednesday after the US President Donald Trump announced plan to withdraw from Iran deal. Japan’s Nikkei 225 has lost 96 points, Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index has dropped 17 points and China’s Shanghai Composite has slipped 6 points.  

Back home, the stock market opened on a buoyant note, but lost its steam as the day progressed amid high volatility. In the end, both Nifty and Sensex ended Tuesday’s session above the neutral line, adding just 0.02%. The broader indices showed mixed trend as the Nifty Mid-cap lost 0.14% and the Nifty Small-cap gained 0.61%. On the sectoral front, Nifty PSU Bank surged 1.26%, followed by Nifty Pvt Bank and Nifty Realty which ended with decent gains of 1.22% and 1.18%, respectively.  

The Tuesday’s session in the US did not have much to offer as all the three major US stock indices ended with little change. That being said, a late recovery on the bourses did help both the Dow and the Nasdaq to claw back into positive territory, while the S&P ended the day with miniscule losses. President Donald Trump’s announcement of his controversial but widely expected decision to pull out of a multilateral nuclear deal with Iran impacted the sentiments. The Dow Jones Industrial Average inched up 3 points to 24,360 and the Nasdaq added 2 points to 7,267, while the S&P 500 edged down 1 point to 2,672.  

The European stocks were stuck in a range-bound movement for a major part of Tuesday’s session and ended the day with modest losses. Traders were reluctant to make any significant move ahead of the US President Donald Trump’s decision on the Iran nuclear deal. The DAX of Germany slipped 0.28%, CAC 40 of France dropped 0.17% and the FTSE 100 of UK finished lower by 0.02%.