(Reuters) – Indian shares will make a cautious start on Friday at the end of a difficult week as foreign investors retreated on fears of slowing economic and business growth, with TCS in focus after the top IT company missed quarterly profit estimates.
The GIFT Nifty futures were trading at 23,586 at 07:58 AM IST, indicating that the blue-chip Nifty 50 will open near Thursday’s close of 23,526.5.
The Nifty 50 and BSE Sensex have lost around 2% each so far this week on continued foreign outflows amid fears of a slowdown in corporate earnings and rising potential for fewer US rate cuts, making emerging markets a less attractive makes an investment.
Foreign portfolio investors have been net sellers in six of the seven sessions in January, with outflows of $2.2 billion.
Tata Consultancy Services posted roughly the same third-quarter results, which kicked off the quarterly earnings season, and, according to analysts, provided encouraging signs on the revival of customer spending, especially in the key US market.
While IT companies expect to benefit after Donald Trump becomes US president as this will remove policy uncertainty, emerging markets in general have suffered from concerns that his tariff plan could boost inflation and thus slow down the pace of US interest rate cuts could delay.
Other Asian markets traded lower that day.
STOCKS TO WATCH
** Engineering and technology services company Tata Elxsi posts a decline in profit in the December quarter
** GTPL Hathaway reports a decline in net profit for the December quarter
** Surya Roshni wins order worth Rs 814.7 million from BPCL for city gas distribution project
(Reporting by Bharath Rajeswaran in Bengaluru; Editing by Savio D’Souza)
