Stock Market Today: Nifty and Sensex set to open higher, PMIs in focus

• India’s Nifty and Sensex are poised to rebound at open on Thursday after Wednesday’s negative close.
• On Wednesday, Nifty corrected from all-time high above 22,200, Sensex failed to sustain above 73,000.
• All eyes now remain on India and US PMI data and RBI Minutes after the hawkish Fed Minutes.

The Sensex 30 and Nifty 50, India’s key benchmark indices, are looking to jump back on the bids at the open on Thursday, having settled in the negative territory on Wednesday.

Optimism on global stocks, thanks to the encouraging earnings report from the American tech-giant Nvidia, which helped overshadow the market’s nervousness due to the hawkish US Federal Reserve (Fed) Minutes of the January meeting.

A modest uptick in the Gift Nifty futures also indicates a positive start for the Indian indices on Thursday.

On Wednesday, the National Stock Exchange (NSE) Nifty 50 lost 0.65% on the day to finish at 22,055.05 while the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) Sensex 30 closed at 72,623.09, down 0.59%.

Stock market news

• India's benchmark indices snapped their six-day winning momentum in Wednesday’s trading, as sellers returned in the late trading amid a sharp decline in the IT, pharma and financial sector shares. 
• Top gainers on Nifty included Tata Steel, JSW Steel, SBI Bank, IndusInd Bank and Tata Consumer Products. Meanwhile, Powergrid, NTPC, Wipro, Coal India and BPCL emerged as the main laggards.
• Among the corporate news, shares of Zee Entertainment eroded nearly 15% after a Bloomberg report revealed an accounting issue of over INR20 billion ($241.36 million) in the company’s accounts.
• Maruti Suzuki India got an inquiry from the Directorate of Revenue Intelligence.
•  Paytm shares continued to hit the upper circuit after falling at record lows.
• World Bank, and others issued offshore India rupee bonds as demand soars.
• The US stock markets saw a mixed close on Wednesday.
• Nvidia released Q4 earnings after the close on Wednesday. Nvidia posted $5.16 earnings per share (EPS) vs. $4.64 expected while revenue stood at $22.10 billion vs. $20.62 billion expected. The AI pioneer said that it expected $24.0 billion in sales in the current quarter.
• The Fed Minutes stated, “most participants noted the risks of moving too quickly to ease the stance of policy and emphasized the importance of carefully assessing incoming data in judging whether inflation is moving down sustainably to 2 percent.” 
• Markets are currently pricing in just about a 30% chance that the Fed could begin easing rates in May, much lower than an over 80% chance a month ago, according to the CME FedWatch Tool. For the June meeting, the probability for a rate cut now stands at 70%, down from 77% seen a day ago.
• People’s Bank of China (PBoC) cut the five-year Loan Prime Rate (LPR) by a record 25 bps from 4.20% to 3.95%. The PBOC rate cut failed to excite traders on Tuesday.
• India’s trade data for January showed last week a shrinking Trade Deficit of $17.49 billion.
• Attention now turns toward the Minutes of the RBI meeting, preliminary PMI data from India and the United States due later on Thursday.