Market Live Updates Today: The Indian stock market is expected to open in the green as trends on SGX Nifty indicate a positive opening for the index in India with 97 points gain

Two stocks - BHEL and Punjab National Bank - are under the F&O ban for February 24. Securities in the ban period under the F&O segment include companies in which the security has crossed 95 percent of the market-wide position limit.

Foreign institutional investors (FIIs) net sold shares worth Rs 1,569.04 crore, whereas domestic institutional investors (DIIs) net bought shares worth Rs 216.67 crore in the Indian equity market on February 23, as per provisional data available on the NSE.

India’s IT sector is experiencing a sequential growth in hiring since the lockdown in 2020, witnessing 39 percent growth in job postings in January compared to the previous month, according to a report. The report by SCIKEY Market Network has analysed data from over 15,000 job postings across India.

Further, the report revealed that Bengaluru and Hyderabad are the highest paying cities for IT jobs in India for the salary bracket of Rs 25 lakhs or more.

Indian media and entertainment (M&E) sector is expected to witness a strong 27 percent growth in revenue to around Rs 1.37 lakh crore in 2021-22, after contracting 26 percent this fiscal, according to ratings agency CRISIL. Segments such as digital and television (TV) will have relatively shorter time to bounce-back to pre-pandemic levels while print, films, outdoor, and radio would take longer.

CRISIL Ratings Ltd Director Nitesh Jain said advertisement and subscription revenues contribute nearly equally to the overall M&E sector's topline, but since the former correlates strongly with economic growth, the pandemic has had a bigger impact on it.

India's GDP may turn positive at 1.3 percent in the third quarter of 2020-21, having witnessed contraction in the previous two quarters due to the coronavirus pandemic, as the number of cases is falling and public spending has started rising, according to a report.

Projecting that the gross domestic product (GDP) may have returned to the black in the last quarter of the calendar year 2020, DBS Bank in the report said the full-year growth in real terms may be at a negative 6.8 percent. DBS Group Research economist Radhika Rao said sharp improvement in the COVID-19 situation and rising public spending are the two factors that bode well for December 2020 quarter.

Seeking to strengthen the risk management framework, Sebi will put in place pre-expiry margins on cash settled contracts wherein the underlying commodities are deemed to be susceptible to possible near zero or negative prices. The latest decision — to be effective from April 1, 2021 — is aimed at encouraging significant reduction of open interest as the contract approaches the expiry date.

The pre-expiry margin will be applicable on certain commodities under the Alternate Risk Management Framework (ARMF). Against the backdrop of the unprecedented event of negative final settlement price in the crude oil futures markets last year, Sebi had prescribed an ARMF that would be applicable in case of near zero and/ or negative prices for any underlying commodities/futures.

The National Stock Exchange (NSE) on Tuesday announced changes in index maintenance guidelines, criteria and methodology. From March 31, there will be changes to revision in the index. reconstitution date, stock capping, quarterly rebalancing of shares and investible weight factors, and calculation of Price to Earnings (P/E) ratio for indices.

There will also be changes to calculation of dividend yield per cent for indices. According to a release, the replacement of stocks resulting from periodic index reconstitution will be implemented from the last working day (beginning of day) of March, June, September and December. This will also depend on the review frequency as may be applicable for each index.

"In case of capped indices, capping of stocks will be implemented from the last working day of March, June, September and December by taking into account closing prices as on T-3 basis, where T day is last working day of March, June, September and December," the release said. Further, quarterly rebalancing of shares and investible weight factors will be implemented from the last working day of March, June, September and December.

Despite near record low interest rates, the pricing of state government bonds skyrocketted to an 11-month high of 7.19 percent, at the latest auction of Rs 23,806 crore market borrowings on Tuesday. It can be recalled that at the first auction of state bonds on April 7, 2020, Kerala was forced to offer 8.96 percent on its Rs 6,000 crore market borrowing.

Analysts blamed such high cost of debt for the fear of banks and other investors of government debt of massive fiscal slippages due to the pandemic. The borrowing cost for the states at latest auction rose to an 11-month high of mid-April levels when it touched 8.96 percent. In fact, there has been a sustained increase in the cost of market borrowings for states since the past six weeks, even though the yields began to rise only after the budget announcement, yet only by 31 bps since then.

Oil prices fell in early trade on Wednesday after industry data showed U.S. crude inventories unexpectedly rose last week as a deep freeze in the southern states curbed demand from refineries that were forced to shut.

U.S. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude futures were down 55 cents or 0.9% at $61.12 a barrel at 0136 GMT, after slipping 3 cents on Tuesday. Brent crude futures fell 38 cents, or 0.6%, to $64.99 a barrel, erasing Tuesday’s 13 cents gain.