Pre-market: Watch out for Titan, Essar Group stocks, UCO Bank

Markets are likely to open higher tracking their Asian peers and overnight gains on Wall Street.

At 8:30AM, the SGX Nifty was up 31 points at 7,309.

Asian shares were trading firm tracking overnight gains on Wall Street. Chinese shares also firmed up on encouraging factory data. The HSBC Flash China Manufacturing Purchasing Managers' Index (PMI) recovered to 49.7 in May from April's final reading of 48.1, beating a Reuters' poll forecast of 48.1. A weaker yen also helped boost sentiment for Japanese shares. The Nikkei was up 1.4%, Shanghai Composite gained 0.5%, Hang Seng rose 0.8% and Straits Times was up 0.2%.

Stocks on wall Street surged 1% rising to their highest level in a month after the US Federal Reserve indicated that it would not hike policy rates soon. The Dow Jones ended down 0.8% at 16,374, S&P 500 lost 0.7% at 1,873 and the tech-laden Nasdaq ended down 0.7% at 4,097.

Stocks in focus

Gold-related stocks such as Titan and Jewellery stocks will gain after the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) on Wednesday liberalised gold import norms under the 80:20 rule. Though the ratio hadn’t been changed, star and premier export houses had been allowed to import the commodity, while banks and nominated agencies had been allowed to provide gold for domestic use as loans to jewellers and bullion traders, said a notification issued by RBI.

Essar Group stocks may witness profit taking after the company in reference to the news item appearing in the news channel titled "Essar Group to consider delisting of its publically traded group Companies", clarified that companies have not received any communication / proposal from its Promoters of their intension to delist the equity shares of the Company.

UCO Bank may see some action after the state-run UCO Bank's final quarter net profit for FY14 grew more than five times at Rs 285 crore against Rs 50 crore a year ago, as it earned more interest income and sold non-performing assets (NPAs) to asset restructuring companies (ARCs).

Texmaco Rail will see some pressure after the company reported weak Q4 earnings wherein it reported a loss of Rs 3.52 crore compared to a profit of Rs 8.85 crore for the same quarter last fiscal.

Companies that will announce their Q4 results today include, IRB Infra, Ashok Leyland, Cummins India, Jain Irrigation, Novartis among others will also be in focus.