Market Ahead Podcast, Oct 14: Top factors that could guide markets today

Market bulls extended their winning ways into the fifth straight session yesterday as macroeconomic tailwinds put stocks in top gear. The frontline indices and the overall BSE m-cap registered new highs in trade on Wednesday as encouraging macro-economic data and hopes of strong Q2 earnings bolstered sentiment.

The BSE Sensex and Nifty registered new peaks at 60,837 and 18,198, respectively, while the market capitalisation of the BSE-listed firms swelled by Rs 2.4 trillion to Rs 270.76 trillion.

Tata Group stocks, however, stole the show after TPG Rise committed to invest Rs 7,500 crore in Tata Motors’ electric business unit. The groups’ overall market cap rose by Rs 64,217 crore in a single day on Wednesday, with Tata Motors alone seeing addition of Rs 30,952 crore to its market cap.

Top gainers in the space included – the twin Tata Motors, Tata Power, Tata Chemicals and Tata Investment Corporation.

Going ahead, markets will not only react to Infosys and Wipro numbers, which were released after the market hours on Wednesday, but will shift focus towards HCL Technologies, which is scheduled to announce earnings today.

Analysts expect a double-digit revenue growth for HCL Tech between 12 to 13 per cent for Q2FY22 on a Year-on-Year basis. The strong recovery, they say, will be led by the ramp-up of large deals won in the earlier quarters. That said, profit growth may be flat with many brokerage projections ranging from 3 to 6 per cent YoY.

Besides, few other notable companies like– Century Textiles, Cyient, Den Networks, Electrotherm Indiabulls Realestate, Inox Winds and Radhe Developers are also scheduled to report September quarter results on Thursday.

On the macro-economic front, after better-than-expected CPI inflation and factory output numbers, markets participants shall keenly watch out for WPI Inflation numbers.

Economists foresee WPI-based inflation to soften a wee bit to 11.2% in September.

Overall, global cues, fund flows, inflation worries and stock specific action will also continue to guide the market sentiment.