Integrated Morning Mint(Pre-Market Report) : 03.03.2008

[Sukumar]

Asia markets shaken ; Time for another plunge ?

Indian Markets open to another nightmare session globally after US
stocks
were hit hard on Friday. From the last few weeks the DOW Jones is
getting
used to the habit of wiping of few days gains in a single day's fall.

Japanese markets followed suit with a huge fall of nearly 4 percent
(540
points) early monday morning signalling another Black Monday across
the
globe. Yen continued to get stronger against the US Dollar. All other
Asian
markets are down in the range of 3 to 4 percent Monday morning.

Chidambaram, Indian Finance Minister as expected announced more
reforms,
wasting a golden oppurtunity to boost the reeling Dalal Street. Though
there
were not much of expectations from the budget this year negative
global cues
might have a say on the street today. Trading volumes reduced by as
much as
30 percent in the last two months. Brokerage stocks are likely to be
impacted
negatively on the news of increase of STT.

Few midcaps are likely to continue the run on positive implications
from the
budget. Indian markets are going through a bad patch, inline with
their
global peers. We are still positive on the economy and favour the
Bulls. We
expect a worst case scenario of BSE Sensex slipping to 14,000 levels
in case
of a recession. But value investors should not be concerned about the
same.

Market Close Box:

BSE Sensex 17578.72 -245.76
NSE Nifty 5223.50 -61.60
USD Rs.39.73
Oil Nymex $102.5