Stock Markets Next Week: Expect Positive Momentum To Continue

The start of the next week may once again see strong momentum, given the way stocks in the US have rebounded. This week we saw strong buying support in the HDFC twins which helped propel the markets higher.

On Friday, domestic equities extended the gains for second consecutive day, mirroring its global peers. Nifty opened gap up and traded in a positive territory throughout the session. The indices closed with handsome gains of 182 points (+1.1%) at 16,352 levels. Broader market too ended in green with gains of 1.4%. All sectorial indices except for Oil & Gas and Metals ended in green. IT and Media were top gainer up more than 2% each. India VIX further cooled off by 5.4% to 21.5 levels.

"Global markets were positive after series of weekly losses as investors took comfort from US Federal Reserve minutes suggesting it would continue with 50bps hike in-line with market expectations. Optimistic U.S. earnings outlook from retail sector and better than expected US initial jobless claims data also helped lifting the sentiments.

After witnessing multiple hurdles and wild swing during the week markets showed some respite in the last two days. Positive momentum continued on Friday on back of support based buying in heavyweight sectors like Banking, IT, Auto and healthcare. Overall Nifty has seen good recovery from lows of 15,800 levels. However it needs to surpass previous hurdles at around 16,400 zones, above which we can see a fresh rally in markets. Investors will take cues monthly macro data that will be released next week globally as well as domestically," says Siddhartha Khemka, Head - Retail Research, Motilal Oswal Financial Services Ltd.

Overall, we believe that markets are factoring the rate hikes and hence if inflation at some stage starts tapering and bond yields start falling, we may see stock markets across the globe, including India rally.