8360 CONTINUES TO BE IMMEDIATE HURDLE; FED IN FOCUS

8360 CONTINUES TO BE IMMEDIATE HURDLE; FED IN FOCUS

WORLD MARKETS                             

Dow and S & P 500 gained about a third of a percent while Nasdq ended marginally lower as investors eyed tech earnings and awaited the Federal Reserve's statement on Wednesday.

The Conference Board consumer confidence survey results for April was 95.2, below expectations of a rise. The S&P/Case-Shiller's 20-City Composite gained 5 percent year-over-year in February, compared with a 4.5 percent increase in January.

European markets plunged 1%-2%. UK economy grew by 0.3% in the first three months of the year, below forecasts of 0.5%, indicating that economic expansion was slowing.

Nymex oil rose 7 cents to $57.06 a barrel. Gold gained $11 to $1214 an ounce.

AT HOME

After a choppy trade for better part of the day, benchmark indices spiked up in the late noon trade to end higher by eight tenth of a percent, breaking three day losing streak. Sensex settled at 27396, up 219 points while Nifty finished at 8286, up 72 points. BSE mid-cap and small-cap indices climbed 1% and 1.5% respectively. BSE Bankex and Auto indices soared 2.4% and 2.2% respectively, becoming top gainers among the sectoral indices while FMCG and IT indices lost 0.7% and 0.4% respectively.

FIIs net sold stocks and index futures worth Rs 1533 cr and 408 cr respectively but net bought stock futures worth Rs 1264 cr. DIIs were net buyers to the tune of Rs 1537 cr.

Rupee appreciated 33 paise to end at 63.14/$.

In an effort to help banks facing asset quality woes and to revive investments in the critical infra sector, the government yesterday discussed 85 large projects from powe, steel, roads and port sector, entailing Rs 3.51 lakh crore in outstanding bank credit.

Bharti Airtel reported worse-than-expected 12.6% q-o-q dip in consolidated net profit at Rs 1255 cr. Revenues fell 0.9% to Rs 23016 cr. EBIDTA margin came in at 35%, up from 33.7%.

Idea reported better-than-expected 22.8% q-o-q rise in net profit at Rs 942 cr. Revenues rose 5.1% to Rs 8422 cr. Operating margin stood at 36.4 as against estimate of 34.5%.

OUTLOOK

Today morning, Shanghai is down more than a percent, other Asian markets are trading with cuts of upto half a percent and SGX Nifty is suggesting about 10 points lower opening for our market.

In yesterday's report we had mentioned that "Nifty has broken the important support of 200 DMA placed at 8260 as well as the 8269 bottom made in March" and that next major support to eye is 8080, where the lower bad of bollinger on the weekly chart is placed.

We had therefore advised holding on to short positions with the stop loss of 8360, the immediate hurdle on the hourly chart.

That continues to be the view. 8360 continues to be the immediate hurdle, a crossover of which is required to generate a buy on the hourly chart.

HDFC and Ambuja Cement will report their quarterly earnings today.

Two day FOMC meeting concluded today and markets would watch out the post-meeting statement for more clues about when interest rates in the U.S. will be raised.