Pre market: Positive opening seen on global cues

Q3 earnings to weigh on investor's sentiments

Markets are likely to mirror cues from global peers and trade strong. Investors will look at corporate numbers as results season begin this week.

Infosys announces Q3 results on Friday while Axis Bank's third quarter results are scheduled on 15 January.

U.S. stocks rose Wednesday, as investors welcomed an upbeat start to corporate earnings season. The Dow jumped 0.46% to 13,390. Nasdaq and S&P 500 also went up half a percent each.

In Asia, markets traded on a positive note, mirroring wall street. Nikkei went up 1% at 10,663. Hang Seng and Shanghai Composite added around a per cent too. At 700 hrs IST, the SGX Nifty was up 32 points at 6031.

In individual stocks,Indian Railways has hiked passenger fares by up to 20% across categories with effect from January 21. For AC I and II, this is the second fare hike this year. Second class fares have been hiked for the first time in ten years. Rail Minister Pawan Kumar
Bansal on Wednesday said that the hike is likely to earn Indian Railways an incremental revenue of Rs 6,600 crore. The minister further said that there will be no fresh hike in the Rail Budget. Rail stocks may come into focus.

 Amid the country facing coal shortage, Coal India has informed the government that it may start production from three projects in the next five years out of 119 mines allocated to it. Coal India may come in the limelight in trades today.

Look out for GlaxoSmithKline as the company has received market regulator Sebi's approval for its over Rs 5,200 crore open offer for Indian subsidiary GlaxoSmithKline Consumer Healthcare.