The Indian equity benchmarks are likely to open higher on Thursday as indicated by the Nifty Futures traded on the Singapore Exchange. The Nifty Futures on Singapore Exchange also known as SGX Nifty Futures rose 45 points or 0.28 per cent to 16,027.
Benchmark stock indices Sensex and Nifty jumped over 1 per cent on Wednesday amid foreign funds turning net buyers of domestic equities after a long gap and positive opening in European stock markets.
The 30-share BSE benchmark index climbed 616.62 points or 1.16 per cent to settle at 53,750.97. During the day, it rallied 684.96 points or 1.28 per cent to 53,819.31.
The NSE Nifty advanced 178.95 points or 1.13 per cent to 15,989.80.
Asia Markets
Most of the Asian markets were trading higher with Japan's Nikkei up 0.48 per cent, Hong Kong's Hang Seng fell 1.2 per cent, South Korea's KOSPI advanced 1.27 per cent and Taiwan Weighted advanced 0.13 per cent.
US Markets
Wall Street capped another choppy day of trading Wednesday with modest gains for the major stock indexes, after investors combed the minutes from the Federal Reserve’s most recent interest rate policy meeting for clues about what the central bank may do next to fight inflation.
The S&P 500 rose 0.4 per cent, its third-consecutive gain, after spending much of the morning and early afternoon wavering between gains and losses. The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 0.2 per cent, while the the Nasdaq rose 0.3 per cent.
Crude Oil and Gold Price Check
Benchmark U.S. crude oil for August delivery fell 97 cents to $98.53 a barrel Wednesday. Brent crude for September delivery fell $2.08 to $100.69 a barrel.
Gold for August delivery fell $27.40 to $1,736.50 an ounce. Silver for September delivery rose 4 cents to $19.16 an ounce and September copper fell 1 cent to $3.41 a pound.
The dollar rose to 135.98 Japanese yen from 135.67 yen. The euro fell to $1.0182 from $1.0263.
Foreign Flows
Foreign institutional investors on Tuesday sold shares worth Rs 330 crore while domestic institutional investors bought shares worth Rs 1,464 crore.
Rupee Check
The rupee recovered from its all-time low to close 3 paise higher at 79.30 (provisional) against the US dollar on Wednesday after a sharp fall in crude oil and foreign fund inflows.
At the interbank forex market, the local unit opened at 79.29 against the greenback and witnessed an intra-day high of 79.24 and a low of 79.37.
Reliance Industries: Reliance Retail Ltd on Wednesday announced its long-term partnership with Gap and plans to bring back the iconic American fashion brand to India.
"Through a long-term franchise agreement, Reliance Retail has become the official retailer for Gap across all channels in India," said a joint statement.
Earlier, Gap Inc had a franchise business relationship with Arvind Fashions Ltd, a company from the Lalbhai group. It was mutually terminated in September 2020 due to circumstances after the outbreak of Covid pandemic.
Bharti Airtel: Bharti Airtel International (Netherlands) BV, which manages Airtel's Africa business, has raised tender offer to buy back up to $450 million (about Rs 3,550 crore) of senior notes, the country's second-largest telecom company said on Wednesday.
The company had issued a tender offer to purchase $300 million worth of its 5.35 per cent guaranteed senior notes of $1 billion due 2024. The offer commenced from June 21 and will expire on July 19, 2022.
Titan: Tata group firm Titan on Wednesday said its sales in the April-June quarter were up nearly three-fold on a year-on-year basis, helped by a low base of the Covid-19 impacted quarter in the last year.
Its network expansion and campaigns continued to progress well throughout Q1FY23, which was the non-disrupted first quarter in the last three years, said Titan in its quarterly updates.
Ashok Leyland: The volatility in the environment in the near term will be high with Russia-Ukraine war triggering massive spikes in crude oil, food, and commodity prices, according to Hinduja flagship firm Ashok Leyland Chairman Dheeraj G Hinduja.
In his address to shareholders in the company's annual report for 2021-22, he also said supply chain disruptions, including chip shortages, are expected to continue.
Punjab National Bank: Public sector lender Punjab National Bank (PNB) on Wednesday said it has raised Rs 2,000 crore by issuing Basel III compliant bonds to certain investors on a private placement basis.
The bank has issued and allotted Basel III compliant additional tier-I bonds at a coupon rate of 8.75 per cent per annum aggregating to Rs 2,000 crore on private placement basis, PNB said in a regulatory filing.
LIC: Life Insurance Corporation (LIC) on Wednesday said government nominee Pankaj Jain has ceased to be the director of the company with effect from July 4.
"....the date of cessation of directorship of Pankaj Jain, government director of the Corporation is July 4, 2022," LIC said in a regulatory filing.
Dabur: Home-grown FMCG firm Dabur said consumption pressure continued across the sector in the April-June quarter of FY23 on account of "unprecedented inflation", which has impacted the share of the income available for spending on consumer staples.
"This was witnessed across urban and rural markets," said Dabur in its update for the quarter ended on June 30, 2022.
In this challenging macro environment Dabur's India business has been "fairly resilient", and is expected to report "high single-digit revenue growth" on a very high base of 35.4 per cent revenue growth in Q1 FY22, it added.
