Indian Shares Seen Sharply Higher At Open After Wall Street Rally

(RTTNews) - Indian shares are geared for gap-up opening on Friday, with underlying sentiment likely to be underpinned by strong gains on Wall Street overnight and a steep decline in oil prices amid signs that Iran and the United States could agree on the terms of a new nuclear deal.

Benchmark indexes Sensex and the Nifty reversed early gains to end down about half a percent each on Thursday amid the expiry of F&O August series derivative contracts.

Asian markets followed Wall Street higher this morning ahead of Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell's speech later today at the Jackson Hole economic conference.

Sentiment was also buoyed by news of possible progress for China and the United States to hammer out a deal to inspect audit records of U.S.-listed Chinese companies.

The dollar was little changed against peers and the two-year yields edged up while oil rebounded after falling overnight.

U.S. stocks closed on a strong note overnight, as jobless claims declined in the latest week and a revision for Q2 GDP showed a smaller decline compared to an earlier reading.

Ahead of a key speech by Fed Chair Powell, Kansas City Fed president Esther George told CNBC that there is more work to be done to curb inflation but It was too soon to predict the size of the September rate hike.

The Dow rallied 1 percent, the S&P 500 climbed 1.4 percent and the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite surged 1.7 percent.

European stocks closed broadly higher on Thursday, as Beijing announced a slew of measures to spur economic growth and the July ECB meeting minutes revealed that there was a split over the 50-bps rate hike to combat soaring inflation.

The pan European Stoxx 600 edged up 0.3 percent. The German DAX rose 0.4 percent and the U.K.'s FTSE 100 inched up 0.1 percent while France's CAC 40 finished marginally lower.