How do you see the stock market trading on Wednesday 13th October? Do you expect Nifty to close above 18,000?

On Tuesday, the bullish trend continued in the market with the consumer stocks like Titan, Bajaj Auto and Bajaj Finance leading the rally in the markets. Nifty stayed above 18,000 for most of Tuesday but eventually closed just about 9 points below that level. It safely looks like the Nifty should scale the 18,000 levels decisively by Dussehra.

While the consumer stocks were in the limelight, it was the IT stocks that came under pressure for the second day in succession. Of course, on 13-Oct, there is the all-important Infosys numbers and the markets will look to positive guidance from Infy. The advance to decline ratio was favourable at 31:19 and VIX is now comfortable at 15.85 levels.

Foreign investors sold Rs.278 crore of equities while domestic funds sold Rs.741 crore on Tuesday. The negative flows hint at aggressive short covering in the markets. In global cues, the Dow and the NASDAQ were down 20-30 bps while European markets were 20 to 30 bps lower. SGX Nifty is trading flat in early trades 6-8 bps of losses.

The level of 18,000 should get taken out this week on the Nifty and that may not be much of an effort, since the Sensex is already comfortably above the 60,000 mark. The macro risks to note today are the troika of oil prices, bond yields and exchange rates. There are headwinds in from these 3 factors and that poses the real risk to the markets.