The domestic stock markets have opened marginally in the red, post the 1 per cent correction witnessed in Friday’s session. At 9:18 am, the BSE Sensex was trading at 50,585.15, lower by 205 points or 0.43 per cent and the NSE Nifty was at 14,974.50, down 56.65 points or 0.40 per cent.
Global stock prices were off to a solid start while U.S. bond yields hovered near a 13-month peak on Monday as investors bet U.S. economic growth will accelerate after the passing of a massive stimulus package.
U.S. S&P500 futures rose 0.25 per cent in early Asian trade, trading just below a record high level touched last week, while Japan’s Nikkei ticked up 0.1 per cent. MSCI’s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan was little changed.
On the economic front, the Consumer Price Index (CPI) or retail inflation for the month of February 2021 surged to 5.03 per cent, the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation (MoSPI) said post market hours on March 12. And the Index of Industrial Production (IIP) contracted by 1.6 per cent in January, after growing in the preceding two months. The index rose by 0.4 per cent in November and by 1 per cent in December 2020.
Meanwhile, oil prices edged up on Monday, with brent drifting near $70 a barrel, propped up by output cuts from major producers and optimism about global economic and fuel demand recovery in the second half of the year.
Brent crude futures for May gained 23 cents, or 0.3 per cent, to $69.45 a barrel by 0102 GMT while U.S. West Texas Intermediate crude for April was at $65.90 a barrel, up 29 cents, or 0.4 per cent.
The equity benchmarks snapped their three-day winning streak on Friday on the back of a broad-based selling pressure. The BSE Sensex had closed lower by 487 points or 0.95 per cent at 50,792.08 and the NSE Nifty fell 144 points or 0.95 per cent to 15,030.95.