Sensex, Nifty Seen Lower At Open On Weak Asian Cues

(RTTNews) - Indian shares look set to open a tad lower on Monday as investors await the last phase of corporate earnings results and key macroeconomic data for directional cues. Foreign exchange reserves numbers for the week ended August 5, bank loan & deposit growth data for the fortnight ended July 29, the CPI inflation for July and industrial output for June all will be released on Friday.

On the earnings front, SBI reported a 6.7 percent fall in Q1 net profit, missing the Street estimates by a wide margin due to a huge hit on the market value of the bank's government bond investments.

State-run oil marketing companies IOC, HPCL and BPCL posted a combined loss of Rs 18,480 crore on holding petrol and diesel prices despite a rise in cost.

This week would be a truncated one as stock exchanges BSE and NSE would remain closed on Tuesday on account of Muharram.

Asian markets were broadly lower this morning, while the dollar extended gains against the yen buoyed by higher Treasury yields as investors ramped up bets on a super-sized U.S. rate hike in September. Investors now await Wednesday's U.S. inflation data for fresh guidance on the rate outlook.

Oil prices were slightly lower in Asian trading after data showed Chinese imports rose at a weaker-than-expected rate in July.

U.S. stocks ended a volatile session mixed on Friday as upbeat jobs data calmed concerns about a recession but raised the chances of a 75-bps rate hike at the September policy meeting.

Data showed that non-farm payroll employment spiked by 528,000 jobs in July after surging by an upwardly revised 398,000 jobs in June. The jobless rate unexpectedly slipped to 3.5 percent from 3.6 percent in June.

The Dow edged up 0.2 percent, while the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite shed half a percent and the S&P 500 slid 0.2 percent.

European stocks also closed lower on Friday as investors reacted to a slew of earnings updates, U.S.-China tensions and the red-hot U.S. jobs report.

The pan European Stoxx 600 lost 0.8 percent. The German DAX gave up 0.7 percent, France's CAC 40 index declined 0.6 percent and the U.K.'s FTSE 100 slipped 0.1 percent.