Indian stocks muted at Tuesday opening bell; investors eye RBI policy meeting

At the opening bell today, Sensex was at 71,671.66 points, down 59.77 points or 0.083 per cent, while Nifty was at 21,757.85 points, down 13.85 points or 0.064 per cent. Among the widely-tracked Nifty 50 companies, 23 advanced while the rest 27 declined.

Bharti Airtel, HCL Technologies, TCS, HDFC Life, and Maruti Suzuki were the top five gainers among the Nifty 50 companies, while Power Grid Corp, Hindalco, NTPC, JSW Steel, and Britannia were the top losers, NSE data showed.

Going ahead into this week, investors will keep track of the three-day RBI monetary policy meeting that starts today. 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 per cent, 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 per cent 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 per cent comfort level but is above the ideal 4 per cent scenario. In December, it was 5.69 per cent.

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 2,281 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 the past two months--November and December. (ANI)