Market Ahead, April 20: Top factors that could guide markets this week

Last week, the Indian markets gained as did their global peers with the Sensex rising 1.38 per cent while the Nifty was up 1.7 per cent. After Friday's strong close, SGX Nifty is indicating a slightly weaker open for the benchmark indices today with almost 50 points cut for the Nifty. This is the trend across the Asian share markets where investors turned cautious after Japan reported its exports fell almost 12 per cent in March from a year earlier. In Monday's early trends, MSCI's broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan eased 0.2 per cent. Japan's Nikkei fell 1.3 per cent and South Korea was down 0.1 per cent.

This week, Indian equity indices will track global cues, trend in coronavirus cases, and corporate results for stock-specific moves.

Coronavirus cases continued to mount across the world. According to one estimate, over 24 lakh people have been infected globally and 1.65 lakh people have died till now. In India, number of cases topped 17,600 with 559 deaths, as per the Worldometer tally. On the other hand, resumption of economic activities for select sectors in non-containment areas will be allowed from today although, a few state governments, including Delhi, have said they would allow no relaxation.

Moreover, investors will await the second batch of economic stimulus package and relief measures which if announced will lift investor sentiment at least in the short term.

Another major focus will be the earnings season which started last week. The Street will first react to HDFC Bank's Q4 numbers announced on Saturday. The private sector lender reported a 2.5 per cent growth in its pre-tax profit at Rs 9,174.3 crore in the March quarter as it doubled its provisioning and contingencies in light of the Covid-19 crisis. Net profit rose 17.7 per cent to Rs 6,927.7 crore in the quarter. Moreover, HDFC Bank's board has submitted to the RBI a list of names to succeed its CEO and MD Aditya Puri 

Today, IT giant Infosys is scheduled to come out with its Q4 numbers and analysts are penciling in a 1 per cent QoQ hit in its revenue growth in constant currency terms for the quarter due to disruptions caused by the Covid-19 lockdown. Later in the week, ACC, CRISIL, Bharti Infratel, MindTree, are some of the firms that will announce their numbers.

Market participants will also track the Rupee's trajectory against the US dollar, oil price movement, and foreign fund flow.

The oil market continues to remain under pressure as the global lockdown saw fuel demand evaporate. On Sunday evening, US May futures contract fell 7 per cent to $16.96 a barrel, a level not seen since November 2001. Brent crude futures was off 32 cents at $27.75 a barrel.