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Markets opened marginally higher on Tuesday tracking their peers in Asia
At 9:16AM, the 30-share Sensex was up 49 points at 21,254 and the 50-share Nifty was up 15 points at 6,319.
Asian markets crept higher on Tuesday as Japanese stocks rebounded and Chinese money rates eased, while the US dollar got a fillip from a report the Federal Reserve would again trim its bond buying next week. The dollar broke the early lethargy with a hop to 104.48 yen when the Wall Street Journal reported the Fed is on track to trim its bond-buying program for the second time in six weeks, paring back by $10 billion to $65 billion a month.
A lacklustre US jobs report had not diminished the central bank's confidence in the economy, wrote Fed watcher Jon Hilsenrath. Investors suspect he has an inside line to policy makers and put a lot of weight on his opinion.
Stock markets will take cues from the next batch of earnings from blue-chips, including HDFC and L&T, this week amid cautious trading ahead of the RBI policy later this month, say experts.
Among other shares, Asian Paints was down nearly 2% after lower volume growth, higher employee expenses and input cost inflation, with a marginally higher tax rate, pulled down Asian Paints’ results for the December 2013 quarter.
Hindustan Zinc was up nearly 5% after the government on Monday approved stake-sale in the company. Sesa Sterlite was up nearly 2%.
