Global cues, budget to weigh on mkt sentiment

Here is a verbatim transcript of Udayan Mukherjee's comments on CNBC-TV18. Also watch the accompanying video.

On our markets:

Global market is a bit of a problem but one is encouraged to see how Asia is dealing with it. It is almost like Asia has got up and say, "Oh God, S&P below 900?" But it is a bad unemployment numbers, so we don't need to follow it. However if it deepens over the next few days, I think you will probably not find that kind of resilience lasting. So the first day we are standing up and saying let us see what the US market does. It has had a knee-jerk reaction, if that gets arrested we will be fine but if this is the start of a bigger trend in the US then I suspect Asia will not be completely immune to it.

A little bit of nervousness is injected into the market and that mixes up things for us because so far global markets have been resilient going into the big event for us. One of the last few budgets, we know, how the global backdrop was; we went into the budget morning and all global markets were down 5%. So hopefully that will not happen on Monday but we should be okay going into the budget.

More importantly this is our last clean trading day before budget day.

There is one hour of trading on Monday as well. So maybe some of the traders will not want to make adjustments before seeing out what happens with global markets tonight in the US because you have got one hour of trading before the speech. So if you have to make some adjustments, you could make in that one hour. I am talking about the last trader who will take a punt. So maybe Monday morning is the time when after looking at how global markets have behaved on Friday, you get a better sense of how to play for the budget because you don't want to take a long position and come in and see the Dow down another couple of points on Monday morning. Llet us keep the global thing in perspective as well while we focus on our big event.

Asian Indices:

Some markets are trading in the red but some are holding out. China is flat and the SGX Nifty as well is pointing to a soft start but not a sale off when we kick off trade.

On Global picture:

The job loss report was quite awful and that is why the markets sold off. We need to be a bit careful out here because global markets have just been pausing for the last one month. The S&P has just been 20 points this way and that of the 900 mark. So you don't know whether that pause is probably giving way to some kind of a trend out here. Yesterday's fall is completely premature to judge that. It is a knee-jerk reaction to a very bad economic report. But you cannot be complacent because after such a long sideways phase, even if the market were to fall or rise 5-6% in either direction, that maybe the start of some kind of a trend.

Whatever the budget does, eventually most markets will move in the same direction as we have seen so many times in the past. It is matter of how much they move. I think the global markets are important, need to be monitored over the next couple of days and the only hope is that today Asian markets are not reacting very violently to the global sell off and that gives us some hope that at least in the near-term, we will have a couple of days of decoupling which is we don't fall as much as the US has.

On range bound markets:

We have been in a bit of a range and it looks like that range might hold before the budget. The range has broadly been 4,200 to 4,400. It doesn't appear at least prima facie that this morning because of the global sale off the Nifty will tank before 4,200, sure it could go below 4,300 for starters - 40-50 points of a cut early in the morning is fine. That fall may then be arrested and the market might become sideways as well.

So whether we end the day at 4,280 or 4,330 is immaterial. The broad point is that the market has been in a 150-200 point range and that remains going into the budget. But you need to keep watching the global space because after what happened last night with the job's report, I think you have got the other trigger also so, it is now a global plus budget going into Monday and both will have important weightages on where the Nifty is heading.