Market Ahead, December 29: All you need to know before the opening bell

U.S. stocks rallied in overnight trade, with each of Wall Street’s main indices closing at record levels after President Donald Trump signed a long-awaited $2.3 trillion pandemic aid bill, increasing optimism for an economic recovery.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 68%, the S&P 500 gained 0.87% and the Nasdaq Composite added 0.74%.

The U.S. House of Representatives, meanwhile, voted to increase stimulus payments to qualified Americans to $2,000 from $600, sending the measure on to the Senate for a vote. This bolstered investor hopes that a long-awaited U.S. pandemic relief package would be expanded, cheering Asian equities.

Japan’s Nikkei leapt 0.9% to its highest since March 1991, while Australian shares climbed 0.7% and futures for the S&P 500 added 0.3%.

Mirroring the upbeat global mood, the SGX Nifty futures were trading 0.41% higher at 13,944, indicating a firm start for the benchmark indices.

Any positive development on the vaccine front could further boost investor sentiment. The UK is likely to approve the Covid-19 vaccine produced by AstraZeneca and the University of Oxford in a few days and it could also secure the regulator’s nod simultaneously in India, said Adar Poonawalla, CEO, Serum Institute on Monday.

This apart, India should maintain its medium-term inflation target at 4% when it carries out a five-year review of the goal in March, two senior RBI officials recommended in a paper released on the bank's website on Monday.

Now, a look at the stock-specific developments that are likely to sway the market today:

IT services major Wipro's share buyback programme will commence today and close on January 11, 2021. In November, shareholders had approved the buyback plan for the purchase of up to 23.75 crore equity shares at Rs 400 per share, aggregating to an amount of up to Rs 9,500 crore.

Life Insurance Corporation (LIC) has sold 2 per cent stake in private sector lender ICICI Bank through open market transactions. The insurer sold 13.8 crore shares, representing 2.002 per cent stake of ICICI Bank, over a period of November 27 to December 24, 2020, the bank said in a regulatory filing.

Biocon has expanded its generic formulations portfolio with the launch of Tacrolimus capsules in the US.