Thursday, 12 January 2017

Nifty Advanced By Another 35 Points Supported By IT & Power And Some Weakness In USD; Looking Ahead, 8485 Area In NF May Be A Big Hurdle



Market Wrap: 12/01/2017 (20:00)

Looking at the chart, Nifty Fut (Jan @8422) has to sustain over 8435-8485 area for further rally towards 8510-8545 & 8585-8635 zone in the short term (under bullish case scenario).

On the other side, sustaining below 8405-8360 zone, NF may further fall towards 8300-8225 & 8125-8000 area in the near term (under bear case scenario).

Nifty Fut (Jan) today closed around 8422 (+0.41%) after a very choppy day of trading, which saw a closing session high of 8424 and an opening session low of 8386.

Domestic market today opened almost flat amid mixed global cues following lack of any definitive plans about the much touted “Trumponomics” from Trump’s presser yesterday. 

The Q&A session of Trump turned into a virtual “clown show” with and the main thrust was towards the Russian scandal episode and hacking allegation with the usual rhetoric about “Obamacare, pharmaceuticals pricing, trade protection, Mexican wall etc. There were no clues about his plan for the huge fiscal spending, tax cuts, and deregulation. Thus, politics was at the forefront rather than economics and “Trump Trade” bumped with fall in USD/US bond yields, metals (Copper) and stocks. Gold & oil was zoomed following weakness in USD.

Now, with unpredictable Trump at the top of the helm, his comments & “Twitter Tantrum” may be now the greatest source of volatility, far greater than any central banker/Fed and “Trumpism” related tremendous euphoria just based on his face value (jawboning) may be one of the headwinds for US as well as global market in 2017 (US political risk) apart from EU political and banking risk.
Now, depending upon the tomorrow’s US retail sales data, we may see more long unwinding/shorts for the USD ahead of 20th Jan, when Trump formally take over. 

EM currency as well as India may be one of the beneficiary of the “Trump Fade Trade” in the coming days (weak USD), even if that may be short lived and will depend upon the actual plan of action & implementation of “Trumponomics”.

Today, Pharma was under pressure initially following Trump’s adverse comments about high pricing of drugs and competitive bidding. But, later Pharma was recovered to some extent as pricing by various Indian companies are already under severe competition there in US and as par some experts, US has no legal authority to force the generic Pharma companies for such competitive bidding. But, various regulatory action or ghosts of US FDA may be a consistent overhang for the Indian Pharma sector apart from comments from Trump.

IT also gave good support to the market today ahead of TCS & Infy result, for which tepid numbers for Q3 may be already priced in, considering steep fall in the last few weeks; their guidance & outlook and strategy under “Trump Threat”, may matter now.

Another reason behind IT rally today may be that under enhanced H1B visa salary limit of min $100000/pa from the previous $60000/pa, Indian bigwigs may be already proving min salary more than $100000 to its employees in working in US; it’s a minimum criteria to survive a decent life in US. Thus it may not be a big issue for them. 

Also, under the Trump’s plan of “rebuilding America again”, there may be renewed IT related boom in US in the coming days. Thus, despite lack of timely adaption for the latest tech (AI/cloud etc), Indian IT companies may not be lose so much even from their traditional business model of servicing/outsource/code writing in the coming days, specially on the back of BFSI & Oil firms related verticals; i.e. IT will trade in a range for the time being.

TCS Q3 result flashed just after market hours today also came good & in line/ slightly above expectation with a decent Q4 guidance. All eyes will be on the Infy numbers & guidance tomorrow.

After upbeat numbers from Indusind Bank & TCS, market may be already beginning to hike Q3 earnings growth after concerns of demonetization; but rather than Q3, Q4FY17 and Q1FY18 may matter more for actual trend as various other high frequency leading data, such as PMI, auto sales, real estate, stamp duty collections etc are indicating for a significant slowdown in the Indian economy after Nov-Dec’16.

After market hours today Indian CPI came at 3.41% for Dec against estimate of 3.57% (prior: 3.63% MOM; 5.61% YOY). Though the headline number looks good, considering India’s long tradition of high inflation economy, the sudden fall may be attributable to the lower demand & weak economic activity as a result of demonetization apart from some seasonal (food inflation) & base effects. It also indicates tepid consumer sentiment & lower discretionary spending.

As par some reports, food inflation may surge after Jan’17 because of lack of harvesting/farming after acute cash crunch in the rural & semi-urban economy (domestic supply may adversely affected) and rising oil may be also a concern. There is not so much moderation effect in core inflation of the economy (core CPI at 4.9%).

IIP for Nov also surprised to the upside and came at 5.7% against estimate of 1.3% (prior: -1.9% MOM; -3.4% YOY). Experts believe this as the favourable seasonal & base effect as in Oct end, there were Diwali holidays last year and various factories were closed. The same may be also true for the current year (Oct’16).

Also, higher petrol & diesel consumption because of use of demonetized notes exception may also be one of the reason for unexpected surge in IIP, apart from surge in capital goods, which grew 15% in Nov’16 against (-) 26.9% in Oct’16 & (-) 24.4% in Oct’15. 
 
Higher capital goods index in IIP may be an indication of corresponding capacity addition by the manufactures after record sales in Diwali season this year (Sep-Oct) to replenish the consumed inventories. Going forward, this may be tepid considering visible slow down in the consumer spending after demonetization. 

Overall, on cumulative basis IIP growth for Apr-Nov’16 came at 0.4% against 3.8% on YOY basis, even before demonetization in line with tepid projection of the GDP by CSO few days ago (7.1% from 7.6% till Oct’16).

Technically, NF need to close consecutively over 8485 area for any further rally towards 9000-9555 area in the coming months; otherwise it may again came down towards 8000-7900 zone.

Tomorrow may be vital after more than 6.5% rally in Nifty in the last few weeks as EC may announce its decision regarding budget day in the weekend and in the next week more earnings will come, which may help to gauze the actual extent of damage done to the economy after demonetization.



SGX-NF


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