April 17 (Reuters) – India’s equity benchmarks are likely to open little changed on Friday as a weak first-quarter forecast by IT company Wipro could \u200coffset optimism over a potential peace deal to end the Iran \u200cwar.<\/p>\n
GIFT Nifty futures were trading at 24,178 as of 8:06 a.m. IST, indicating that the benchmark Nifty \u200b50 will open near Thursday’s close of 24,196.75.<\/p>\n
Asian markets fell 0.6% as fuel supply concerns and doubts over whether upcoming U.S.-Iran peace talks would help ease disruptions in the Strait of Hormuz weighed on risk sentiment. [MKTS\/GLOB]<\/p>\n
“Asian markets appear less convinced as investors remain \u200cwary of how durable these \u2060developments are, especially given the fragile nature of geopolitical agreements in the region,” said Hariprasad K, research analyst and founder of Livelong \u2060Wealth.<\/p>\n
A 10-day ceasefire between Lebanon and Israel went into effect on Thursday and President Donald Trump said the next U.S.-Iran meeting may take place over the weekend.<\/p>\n
Lower oil prices \u200bare also \u200blikely to offer some relief, with Brent \u200bcrude falling about 1% to $98 \u200cper barrel in early trading on Friday, a positive for India, the world’s third-largest largest oil importer.<\/p>\n
Easing crude prices, alongside hopes of a de-escalation in the conflict, supported foreign inflows. Foreign portfolio investors bought Indian shares worth 3.82 billion rupees ($41.08 million) on Thursday, marking the second straight session of buying, as per provisional data.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, Wipro’s \u200cU.S.-listed shares fell 4.8% overnight after it posted \u200blackluster quarterly results and forecast muted demand for the \u200bfirst quarter, citing spending curbs \u200bby its U.S. banking and financial clients in an uncertain economic \u200cenvironment.<\/p>\n
STOCKS TO WATCH<\/p>\n
** HDFC Life Insurance \u200bCompany’S new business value \u200bfell in March-quarter, while profit rose slightly, driven by policy renewals<\/p>\n
** Angel One reports 83% rise in fourth-quarter profit, helped by stronger client trading activity \u200band higher order volumes<\/p>\n
** Axis \u200cBank to consider raising funds via issue of equity shares or \u200bdebt instruments during board meeting on April 25<\/p>\n
($1 = 92.9860 Indian rupees)<\/p>\n
(Reporting by \u200bVivek Kumar M; Editing by Sonia Cheema)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"April 17 (Reuters) – India’s equity benchmarks are likely to open little changed on Friday as a weak…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":396557,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[2372,188217,42,117780,43,43469,12521,40,38,41,39,1960],"class_list":{"0":"post-396556","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-asian-markets","9":"tag-equity-shares","10":"tag-headlines","11":"tag-iran-war","12":"tag-news","13":"tag-peace-talks","14":"tag-president-donald-trump","15":"tag-top-news","16":"tag-top-stories","17":"tag-topnews","18":"tag-topstories","19":"tag-wipro"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/396556","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=396556"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/396556\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/396557"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=396556"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=396556"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=396556"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}