Nifty Seen Opening Near 16,700; Wipro, BHEL In Focus

The Nifty 50 index is seen opening close to its important psychological level of 16,700 as indicated by the Nifty Futures traded on Singapore Exchange. Nifty futures on Singapore Exchange also known as the SGX Nifty futures rose 25 points to 16,693. Meanwhile, Asian shares were mixed on Friday morning as slight gains in China were balanced by declines elsewhere and investors globally turned cautious ahead of a long-awaited speech by Fed Chair Jerome Powell. Remarks from the Federal Reserve's more hawkish policy makers and a deadly attack in Afghanistan also subdued sentiment and helped the dollar gain against a basket of its peers.

MSCI's broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan lost 0.1 per cent while Japan's Nikkei shed 0.46 per cent.

Overnight, on Wall Street, all three major indexes closed lower, with stocks in consumer discretionary, technology, financials and consumer staples among the biggest losers.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 0.54 per cent to 35,213.12, the S&P 500 lost 0.58 per cent to 4,469.92 and the Nasdaq Composite dropped 0.64 per cent to 14,945.81.

Back home, foreign institutional investors sold shares worth Rs 1,975 crore on Thursday while domestic institutional investors bought shares worth Rs 1,055 crore.

Wipro will be in focus after the company partnered with DataRobot to deliver scalable enterprise augmented intelligence solutions. "The partnership will deliver Augmented Intelligence at scale, to help customers become AI driven enterprises, and accelerate their business impact. DataRobot's Augmented Intelligence platform complements Wipro's expertise in enterprise AI," Wipro said in a press release.

BHEL will be in focus after the company said that it signed a memorandum of understanding with JSC Rosoboronexport for joint production of spare parts for Indian Navy Aircraft Carrier Vikramaditya.