Before Market Opens: From Wall Street to SGX Nifty; 9 things to know at 9 am on January 4, 2023

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.

Key equity indices the Sensex and the Nifty closed in the green, extending gains into the second consecutive session on January 3 amid broadly positive global cues. Sensex closed 126 points, or 0.21 percent, up at 61,294.20 while the Nifty closed at 18,232.55, up 35 points, or 0.19 percent. Mid and smallcaps also rose in sync with the benchmarks. The BSE Midcap index ended with a gain of 0.22 percent and the Smallcap index rose 0.18 percent.

At 8:20 am, the SGX Nifty was trading 49 points or 0.3 percent lower at 18,256, indicating a negative opening for the Indian markets. 

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 rupee fell almost 15 paise to close at 82.89 per dollar after the greenback witnessed buying interest on January 3. Soft gains in the domestic equity market and outflow of foreign capital also weighed on the domestic currency.

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

Gold traded lacklustre in early Asian hours on January 4, as investors awaited minutes from the Federal Reserve's December policy meeting that could offer hints on the rate hike trajectory by the US Federal Reserve.