Market Ahead, June 4: All you need to know before the opening bell

The Indian markets look set to follow the six successive days of gain with another gap-up open today, once again on the back of favourable global cues. The SGX Nifty is up 80 points and is indicating an open at around 10,150 levels for the Nifty, although investors can expect some volatility, it being the weekly expiry today.

Wall Street rallied broadly overnight with the Nasdaq approaching record highs as signs of an economic recovery from mandated shutdowns helped investors look beyond US social unrest and pandemic worries. The Dow Jones rose 2.05 per cent, the S&P 500 gained 1.36 per cent and the Nasdaq Composite added 0.78 per cent.

Asian equities also ticked up in Thursday's early deals. Australian ASX 200 rose 1.09 per cent and Japan’s Nikkei was up 0.8 per cent.

Oil prices gained too and even briefly traded above $40 a barrel. Brent crude futures were last trading at $39.52 a barrel.

Besides, investors will react to the corporate results announced post market hours yesterday.

Hit by a loss of inventory, state-run Bharat Petroleum Corporation reported a pre-tax loss of Rs 2,959 crore for the quarter ended March 31. On the other hand, Aurobindo Pharma reported a 32 per cent jump in profit before tax at Rs 1,077.51 crore for the quarter on the back of increased revenue fuelled by formulations business growth across geographies. 

Today, a total of 15 companies including DLF, PI Industries, and SRF are scheduled to announce their March quarter results.

Meanwhile, HDFC Life will be in focus today as Standard Life is set to sell 4 crore shares of the company via block trades in the offer price range of Rs 490 and Rs 501 a share.

Meanwhile, the number of coronavirus cases in India continues to swell. The cases surged by 9,638 in a day, taking its total number of coronavirus cases to 216,824, according to data compiled by Worldometer. The country's Covid-19 death toll now stands at 6,088.

Now, let's move to other top news of the day.

According to sources, the Union Cabinet yesterday cleared a proposal to suspend the IBC process for six months, which could be extended up to a year. The government is likely to promulgate an Ordinance soon to bring the change into effect.

Facebook will acquire 9.9 per cent stake in Jio Platforms announced last month via a new entity -- Jaadhu Holdings LLC. In April, Facebook had announced an investment of $ 5.7 billion in Jio Platforms.

Also, Reliance Industries’ Rs 53,125-crore fund raising initiative to reduce debt saw a stellar response from investors. The 422.6-million share offering received bids for 671.1 million shares, making it among the most subscribed rights offerings in India.

And, in the end, rating agency Icra has said the air passenger traffic in the country is expected to remain under pressure for the first half of the current fiscal, with the full year passenger volume likely to go down by about half despite some recovery in the second half of FY21.

Read by Kanishka Gupta