Sensex, Nifty Seen Lower At Open As Trump-Xi Meeting Begins In South Korea

(RTTNews) - Indian shares may open a tad lower on Thursday, tracking mixed cues from global markets.

A team of negotiators from the European Union (EU) will visit New Delhi next week for the 15th round of negotiations for a trade deal, commerce and industry minister Piyush Goyal, who returned from a three-day visit to Brussels, told reporters.

He expects that both sides should make "substantial progress towards closure" by December.

Benchmark indexes Sensex and Nifty rose around half a percent each on Wednesday after U.S. President Donald Trump signaled the long-awaited U.S.-India trade deal is coming soon, hinting at tariff cuts and easing tensions over Russian oil imports. The rupee gained 6 paise to close at 88.20 against the dollar.

Foreign Institutional Investors offloaded shares worth Rs 2,540 crore on a net basis Wednesday, while domestic institutional investors net bought shares to the extent of Rs 5,693 crore, according to provisional exchange data.

Asian markets were muted this morning as investors reacted to hawkish remarks from Fed Chair Jerome Powell and a mixed bag of U.S. tech earnings.

Investors also eagerly await the outcome of a highly anticipated meeting today between U.S. President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping today — the first in-person encounter between the two leaders during Trump's second term.

The dollar nudged higher while gold was little changed as traders scaled back bets of a U.S. rate cut in December.

Oil drifted lower after snapping a three-day losing run in the previous session on data showing a large drop in U.S. stockpiles.

Overnight, U.S. stocks fluctuated before ending mixed after the Fed lowered interest rates by another quarter point, as widely expected, and said it will halt quantitative tightening program amid signs of stress in money markets.

However, Chair Jerome Powell cautioned that a further reduction in rates in December is "not a foregone conclusion," noting officials had "strongly differing views about how to proceed" at the final meeting of the year.

Powell also highlighted the high level of uncertainty due to government shutdown delaying key data and said there's a "growing chorus" that feels the Fed should "wait a cycle" to continue cutting rates.

The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite gained 0.6 percent to reach a new record closing high after President Trump said he would discuss the sale of Nvidia's Blackwell chips in his highly anticipated meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping on Thursday.

The S&P 500 finished marginally lower and the Dow slid 0.2 percent.

European stocks turned in a mixed performance on Wednesday ahead of the Fed's interest-rate decision.

The pan European Stoxx 600 finished marginally lower after hitting an intraday record high.

While the U.K.'s FTSE 100 rose 0.6 percent, France's CAC 40 eased 0.2 percent and the German DAX dipped 0.6 percent.