Opening Bell:
Gift Nifty is down by 18.0 points in the early morning trade, indicating a negative opening for Indian stock market.
Asian-Pacific markets fell following a drop in Wall Street’s Nasdaq and S&P500. Investors awaited India’s factory data and monitored rising tensions after Iran deployed a destroyer to the Red Sea. Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 slid 1%, while Hong Kong’s Hang Seng futures pointed to a weaker opening. South Korea’s Kospi dropped 1.36%, and Japan’s markets remained closed. In Tokyo, a Japan Airlines flight collision caused five deaths as a coast guard aircraft headed for earthquake relief.
On the opening day of 2024, the US stock market saw a mostly downward trend, primarily due to a tech stock sell-off in response to increasing Treasury yields. The S&P 500 marking a 0.57% decrease. Meanwhile, the Nasdaq Composite dropped by 1.63%, whereas the Dow Jones Industrial Average ended slightly up by 0.07%.
European stocks on Tuesday closed lower, shortly after the regional benchmark hit its highest level in nearly two years. The Stoxx 600 index provisionally ended down 0.2%, erasing gains of nearly 0.7% earlier in the session which saw it clock its highest level since January 20, 2022, according to LSEG data.
Stocks News:
👉 Adani Group stocks: The Supreme Court will pronounce judgement on a batch of petitions seeking court-monitored investigation into the allegations made by made by US-based firm Hindenburg Research against the Adani group of companies regarding stock market violations. Last January, Hindenburg had accused the conglomerate of “brazen stock manipulation and accounting fraud”, allegations that the Adani group has vehemently denied.
👉 Avenue Supermarts: The D-Mart chain operator has clocked 17.2% on-year growth in standalone revenue from operations at Rs 13,247.33 crore for the quarter ended December FY24. The total number of stores as of December 2023 stood at 341.
👉 Coal India: The miner’s cumulative coal dispatch so far this fiscal year has jumped 11.36% to 709.80mt. The state-run company’s supplies to non-regulated sectors including cement and steel manufacturers in the current financial year touched 98mt as of December, up 31% from the year-ago period. Coal India’s dispatches to power plants rose to 454mt between April and December–8mt higher than the committed quantity for the period, and about 5% higher than the same period a year earlier.
👉 Hero MotoCorp: Sold 3,93,952 units of motorcycles and scooters in December, down 0.05% from 3,94,179 units dispatched in the year-ago period. Domestic sales fell 0.92% on year to 3,77,842 units but exports rose 25.7% to 16,110 units during the period under review.
👉 Foreign institutional investors (FIIs) bought shares worth Rs 1,602.16 crore, while Domestic institutional investors (DIIs) sold Rs 1,959.04 crore worth of stocks on January 2, provisional data from the NSE showed.
Domestic and International Events
- Transactions through the unified payments interface (UPI) platform crossed the 100 billion-mark in calendar year 2023 to close at around 118 billion, as per the data shared by the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI). This marks a 60% growth as compared to 74 billion UPI transactions recorded in 2022. During August 2023, UPI had crossed the milestone of 10 billion transactions a month for the first time and continued to do so in the following months. In December, UPI recorded 12 billion transactions with a cumulative value of Rs 18.23 lakh crore. The total value of UPI transactions in 2003 stood at around Rs 182 lakh crore, higher by 44% as compared to Rs 126 lakh crore in 2022.
- The S&P Global’s final reading of US manufacturing activity for December came in at 47.9, down from 49.4 in November and below the estimates of 48.2.
- Oil prices were volatile on Tuesday after Iran dispatched a warship to the Red Sea, as the situation remains tense in the critical waterway for global shipments that has seen vessels attacked by Yemen’s Houthi rebels. The West Texas Intermediate contract for February gained 1 cent, or .01%, to trade at $71.66 a barrel on Tuesday. The Brent contract for March gained 14 cents, or .18%, to trade at $77.18.
- Gold prices gained on Tuesday, boosted by expectations of an easing of monetary policy by the US Federal Reserve in 2024 as investors look forward to a slew of economic data this week that could shed more light on the timing of rate cuts. Spot gold gained 13% in 2023, its first annual rise since 2020. On Tuesday it was up 0.6% at $2,074.40 per ounce as of 1025 GMT. U.S. gold futures also rose 0.6%, to $2,084.00 per ounce.
Key Equity Indices
| EMERGING | LATEST | % 1D |
| Hang Seng | 16,789 | (1.5) % |
| Shanghai Composite | 2,962 | (0.4) % |
| DEVELOPED | LATEST | % 1D |
| Dow Jones | 37,715 | 0.1 % |
| DAX | 16,769 | 0.1 % |
| FTSE 100 | 7,722 | (0.2) % |
| Nikkei | 33,464 | (0.2) % |
| Straits Times | 3,230 | (0.3) % |
