Indian stocks largely steady Tuesday morning

MUMBAI: Indian stocks indices were largely steady Tuesday morning after closing on the higher side during the previous session. At the time of writing this report, Sensex and Nifty were in the (-) 0.1-0.1 per cent range.

"The current market signals indicate that the worst of the banking crisis is behind us. S&P 500 is now trading above the March 10 level when SVB collapsed. The stock prices of European banks also are improving indicating that there are no fears of contagion now," said V K Vijayakumar, Chief Investment Strategist at Geojit Financial Services.

"The global economy is slowing down; but Asia, particularly India, will outperform. India's banking system is well regulated, strong and resilient," said Vijayakumar. On Monday, US stocks ended mostly higher Monday as investors welcomed waning signs of banking sector stress after just failed Silicon Valley Bank's loans and deposits were acquired by First Citizens Bank.

One of the most prominent lenders in the world of technology startups, Silicon Valley Bank, which was struggling, collapsed on March 10, after a run on the bank by the depositors.

For fresh cues, the next RBI monetary policy meeting, scheduled to be held in the first week of April 2023, will be closely watched. At the latest Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) of the RBI in early February, it decided to raise the repo rate by 25 basis points to 6.5 per cent to manage inflation. Raising interest rates is a monetary policy instrument that typically helps suppress demand in the economy, thereby helping the inflation rate decline.

According to SBI Research's latest Ecowrap report, the RBI is expected to pause its interest rate hike and the current 6.5 per cent repo rate could be the terminal rate for now. The report asserted that the RBI has enough reasons to pause the repo rate hike in the April meeting.