Only a close below 6,490 on Tuesday may pull the Nifty lower

In line with negativity on the US bourses and the Asian indices, the Indian indices made a weak opening. Witnessing a range bound session until the last hour of the session, the benchmarks suddenly spurted up to enter green zone and close in the positive.

The Sensex opened at 21,648 while the Nifty opened at 6,447. the Sensex moved up from the low of 21,573 to 21,853 and closed at 21,810 (up 35 points or 0.16%) while the Nifty moved in the range of 6,433 and 6,518 and closed at 6,504 (up 11 points or 0.17%). The NSE recorded a lower volume of 59.64 crore shares.

The stock market remains closed on Monday, 17 March 2014, on account of Holi.

After weak economic data from China on Thursday, at least four investment banks lowered forecasts for China's 2014 economic expansion, leading to more pessimism across European and US exchanges.

Back home the inflation based on the wholesale price index (WPI) eased to 4.68% in February 2014, from 5.05% in January 2014 and 7.28% during the corresponding month of the previous year, data released by the government on Friday. Wholesale prices-based inflation eased to a lower-than-expected nine-month low. Build up inflation rate in the financial year so far was 5.17% compared to a build up rate of 6.15% in the corresponding period of the previous year. The government revised upwards the rate of WPI inflation for December 2013 to 6.4%, from 6.16% reported on 15 January 2014.

The government is seeking to raise around $500 million by selling partial stakes in 10 state-owned companies via an exchange traded fund that will be operated by Goldman Sachs' asset management unit.  The ETF will target mainly retail investors, although the fund will also be sold to institutional and foreign investors.

The economy can grow an annual 5.2% in the quarter to end-March on higher farm output growth, the chairman of the Prime Minister's Economic Advisory Council said on Friday. C Rangarajan also said he foresees the economic growth to pick up to 5.5% to 6% in the fiscal year that begins on 1 April 2014.

US indices closed sharply in the negative on Thursday. US retail sales rose in February for the first time in three months which was better-than-forecast data. On the other hand, the number of Americans filing applications for unemployment benefits unexpectedly fell last week to the lowest level since the end of November. Jobless claims dropped by 9,000 to 315,000 in the week ended March 8, a Labor Department report showed in Washington.

Except for Jakarta Composite (up 3.23%) all the other Asian indices closed in the negative. Nikkei 225 (3.30%) as the top loser.

China's Premier Li Keqiang told reporters on Thursday that the nation's 2014 goal of 7.5% economic growth is flexible and some financial-product defaults may be unavoidable. European indices were trading in the negative while the US Futures were trading marginally higher.