WPI inflation data for March, quarterly earnings, global trends, and foreign fund trading activity are major factors that will drive equity markets this week, analysts said.
Investors would also focus on the movement of crude oil prices and the trend in the rupee against the US dollar.
Markets last week
In a holiday-shortened last week, the 30-share BSE Sensex climbed 598.03 points to 60,431 and Nifty rose 229 points to 17,828.
Equity markets were closed on Friday on account of Dr. Baba Saheb Ambedkar Jayanti.
WPI
Wholesale Price Index (WPI) inflation data for March would be released on Monday. With the likely drop in food products, manufacturing inflation, and fuel, the annual rate of inflation based on the All India Wholesale Price Index is expected to decline. According to experts, the WPI is expected to be around 2 per cent, against the 3.85 per cent in February. This will be the fourth consecutive month that the inflation is below the 5 per cent mark.
Earnings
50 companies including HCL Technologies, Hindustan Zinc, Tata Coffee, and Tata Communications are some of the major firms that will announce their quarterly earnings this week. The markets will also first react to Infosys and HDFC Bank's quarterly earnings announced in the last week.
Largest private sector lender HDFC Bank on Saturday reported a 20.6 per cent jump in its consolidated net profit to Rs 12,594.5 crore for the March 2023 quarter, driven by a healthy core performance.
Infosys on Thursday reported lower-than-expected growth in the fourth quarter net profit and gave a weak 4-7 per cent revenue growth guidance for FY24 amid the tightening of IT budgets by clients following turmoil in the US banking sector.
Foreign Exchange Reserves
The Foreign Exchange Reserves for the week that ended on April 14 will be released next week on April 21. In addition to this, the deposit and bank loan growth numbers for the fortnight that ended on April 7 will also be released on the same day.
China's GDP
For global investors the economic growth number from the World's second-largest country China would be important. For this calendar year the country has set a growth target of around 5 per cent.
Listing
Avalon Technologies is to be listed on April 18. The electronic manufacturer was subscribed 2.21 times during April 3-6, majorly by qualified institutional buyers whose reserved portions were booked approximately 3.57 times.
Ex-dividend
Nestle, Muthoot Finance, Dhampur Sugar Mill, Thyrocare Technologies, Mold-Tek Packaging, and Huhtamaki India are expected to start quoting ex-dividend from next week.
With inputs from agencies
