Nifty, Sensex gain in morning trade as investors await RBI monetary policy

• State Bank of India, Axis Bank, JSW Steel, Tata Steel, Titan, Kotak Mahindra Bank are some of the major gainers.
• HCL Technologies, Infosys, Power Grid, Wipro, Tech Mahindra are among the laggards.
• Foreign portfolio investors have again started accumulating Indian stocks this month.

Indian benchmark stock indices, the Nifty and the Sensex, were marginally higher at Wednesday's opening bell, tracking positive cues from overnight US markets and the latest return of foreign portfolio investors. At the time of publishing, the Nifty had recaptured 22,000 while the Sensex was up 200 points.

Among the widely-tracked Nifty 50 stocks, 34 advanced, 15 declined, and the rest 1 was steady at the time of filing this report.

Among the Sensex firms, State Bank of India, Axis Bank, JSW Steel, Tata Steel, Titan, Kotak Mahindra Bank, Bajaj Finance, Bajaj Finserv, Sun Pharma and Reliance Industries were the major gainers.

HCL Technologies, Infosys, Power Grid, Wipro, Tech Mahindra and ICICI Bank were among the laggards.

In Asian markets, Seoul and Shanghai were trading in the positive territory while Tokyo and Hong Kong were quoted in the negative zone.

Going ahead into this week, investors will keep track of the outcome of the three-day RBI monetary policy meeting on Thursday. The RBI typically conducts six bimonthly meetings in a financial year, where it deliberates interest rates, money supply, inflation outlook, and various macroeconomic indicators.

In its December meeting, the RBI unanimously decided to keep the policy repo rate unchanged at 6.5%, thus maintaining the status quo for the fifth straight time.

The Monetary Policy Committee of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) in its February review meeting is expected to again put a pause on the repo rate, according to SBI Research. The repo rate is the rate of interest at which RBI lends to other banks.

Barring the latest pauses, the RBI raised the repo rate by 250 basis points cumulatively to 6.5% since May 2022 in the fight against inflation. Raising interest rates is a monetary policy instrument that typically helps suppress demand in the economy, thereby helping the inflation rate decline.

The retail inflation in India though is in RBI's 2-6% comfort level but is above the ideal 4% scenario. In December, it was 5.69%.

Coming to FPI inflows, after turning net buyers in January, foreign portfolio investors have again started accumulating Indian stocks this month. They have so far bought equities worth Rs 3,044 crore.

They had aggressively sold Indian stocks in January, turning net sellers in the Indian equity market, after making a beeline to accumulate domestic stocks during November and December.

(With text input from PTI & ANI)