Stock markets likely to open positive today

Domestic equity market seems to have bottomed out so we may see gap up opening today, says Prakash Diwan, director, Altamount Capital Management.

In the past three trading sessions, the key benchmark index S&P BSE Sensex and CNX Nifty have plunged almost 713 points and 216 points, respectively. G Chokkalingam, founder, Equinomics, a Mumbai-based research and fund advisory firm, says, "Lot of damage has already done and market has corrected around 10 per cent from its peak. We can see some short covering today."

Asian peer markets, Nikkei 225 was up by 0.50 per cent while Hang Seng and Shanghai were down by 0.1 per cent and 0.22 per cent, respectively.

Diwan says, "Share price of companies which registered healthy profit figures yesterday may bounce back in today's trading session especially from the information technology sector. Also, Q4 result of Idea Cellular may give direction to market."

However, Sumeet Bagadia, associate director, Choice Broking believes that the CNX Nifty index is likely to continue its downward journey ahead of derivative expiry on Thursday and may drop below 8,050 levels in 2-3 days.

On Monday, the index fell below 200 day moving averave (DMA), indicating strong expectations of a further decline.