Stock Market Today: Top 10 things to know before the market opens today

The market is expected to open in the red as trends in the SGX Nifty indicate a negative opening for the broader index in India with a loss of 66 points.

The BSE Sensex gained 126 points to close at 61,294, while the Nifty50 rose 35 points to 18,232 and formed a bullish candle on the daily charts by making higher high higher low formation on Tuesday.

As per the pivot charts, the Nifty may have the key support level at 18,172, followed by 18,148, and 18,109. If the index moves up, the key resistance levels to watch out for will be 18,250, followed by 18,274 and 18,313.

Stay tuned to Moneycontrol to find out what happens in the currency and equity markets today. We have collated a list of important headlines across news platforms which could impact Indian as well as international markets:

Wall Street's main indices closed lower on the first trading day of 2023 with the biggest drags from Tesla and Apple, while investors worried about the Federal Reserve's interest-rate hiking path as they awaited minutes from its December meeting.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 10.88 points, or 0.03 percent, to 33,136.37; the S&P 500 lost 15.36 points, or 0.40 percent, to 3,824.14; and the Nasdaq Composite dropped 79.50 points, or 0.76 percent, to 10,386.99.

Asia-Pacific shares traded mixed as investors look ahead to the Federal Reserve’s meeting minutes for December.

Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 was up 1.29 percent, while the Nikkei 225 in Japan fell 1.6 percent in its first hour of trade. The Topix declined 1.11 percent. South Korea’s Kospi gained 0.39 percent, while the Kosdaq was up 0.26 percent.

Trends in the SGX Nifty indicate a negative opening for the broader index in India with a loss of 66 points on Wednesday. The Nifty futures were trading around 18,240 levels on the Singaporean exchange.

Oil prices tumbled 3.5 percent in volatile trade on Tuesday, pressured by weak demand data from China, a gloomy economic outlook and a stronger US dollar.

Brent futures for March delivery fell $3.03 to $82.88 a barrel, by 11:45 am ET (16:45 GMT). US crude fell $2.81 to $77.45 per barrel. In early trade, both contracts had risen more than $1 a barrel.

The Federal Reserve is set to shed more light on why it’s worried that strong inflation may linger as the US economy moves into the new year.

At the conclusion of the December 13-14 meeting of the Federal Open Market Committee, policymakers published new projections showing they expected inflation would end 2023 higher than they previously thought. That led to surprisingly widespread support in the projections for the notion that interest rates would need to rise above 5 percent in 2023.

The monthly domestic air passenger traffic touched 1.29 crore to cross the pre-COVID level in December 2022, with Civil Aviation Minister Jyotiraditya Scindia terming it as a healthy trend and a good sign for the industry.

In December 2019, the domestic air passenger traffic stood at 1.26 crore. "2022 sets new record in air passenger movement," according to a graphic shared by the minister on his Twitter handle on Tuesday.

German inflation eased for a second month in a row in December due to falling energy prices and the government's one-off payment of household energy bills, coming in below expectations even as analysts warn that a continued slowdown is not a given.

German consumer prices, harmonised to compare with other European Union countries, rose by 9.6 percent on the year in December, preliminary data from the Federal Statistics Office showed on Tuesday. Analysts polled by Reuters predicted prices would rise by 10.7 percent year-on year in December.

Foreign institutional investors (FII) sold shares worth Rs 628.07 crore, while domestic institutional investors (DII) bought shares worth Rs 350.57 crore on January 3, as per provisional data available on the NSE.

As the stock-market rout shows no end in sight, an equity indicator constructed by Bank of America Corp. offers a glimmer of hope.

The bank’s so-called sell-side indicator, which aggregates Wall Street strategists’ asset allocation views, fell 33 basis points in December and is now 1.5 percentage points away from the level that’s historically tied to a good buying opportunity. At the current level, the indicator is closest its been to signaling a ‘buy’ since 2017.

“One reason we are more constructive on equities in 2023 is the big drop in sentiment during 2022,” Bank of America’s strategists including Savita Subramanian wrote in note to clients. “It has been a bullish signal when Wall Street strategists were extremely bearish, and vice versa.”

India aims to cut spending on food and fertiliser subsidies to Rs 3.7 trillion ($44.6 billion) in the fiscal year from April, down 26 percent from this year, two government officials said, to rein in a fiscal deficit that ballooned during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Food and fertiliser subsidies alone account for about one-eighth of India's total budget spending of Rs 39.45 trillion this fiscal year, but reductions in food subsidies, in particular, may prove politically sensitive with elections looming on the horizon.

The government expects to budget around Rs 2.3 trillion for food subsidies in the coming fiscal year, compared with Rs 2.7 trillion for the current year to March 31, the two officials said. Spending on fertiliser subsidies will likely fall to about Rs 1.4 trillion, according to one of the officials and a third government official. That compares with nearly Rs 2.3 trillion this year, the third official added.