Pre-market: Nifty seen opening flat; may retest 8350

NEW DELHI: The 50-share Nifty index is expected to open flat on Thursday following muted trend seen in other Asian markets. Tracking the momentum, the index may retest its crucial psychological support level of 8,350 in trade today.

At 08:00 A.M., Nifty India stock futures in Singapore were trading 5.50 points higher at 8,382 indicating a flat opening on the domestic market.

Benchmark indices fell more than one per cent on Wednesday, to close at their lowest in more than two weeks. The BSE index ended 1.27 percent lower, while the NSE index shed 1.33 percent, their lowest close since July 28.

Market participants will also react to macro dat which came post market hours on Wednesday. Inflation based on the consumer price index ( CPI) fell sharply in July to its lowest in the current series, while the index of industrial production ( IIP) climbed to a four-month high, adding to the evidence that growth was gathering pace.

"Nifty has strong support around 8300-8320 levels. It was aable to defend this level last time as well, but once 8300 goes, you basically have 7950-8000 on the market," says Ashwani Gujral, Fund Manager, Ashwanigujral.com in an interview with ET Now.

"Possibly 8300 is fairly key level to watch out and if it slips below that 200-300 points of fairly sharp selling could come in," he added.

He further added that if IT would not have gone up this market would have plunged 170 points. But given the momentum sooner or later we will go through 8300 and possibly revisit 7950-8000, added Gujral.

Overnight, US stocks ended flat as energy shares and Apple bounced back, offseting continued concerns about a slowdown in China. "Stocks had tumbled early in the session after China's currency hit a four-year low, its second session of decline," said a Reuters report.

The Dow Jones industrial average fell 0.33 points to 17,402.51, the S&P 500 gained 1.98 points, or 0.1 per cent, to 2,086.05 and the Nasdaq Composite added 7.60 points, or 0.15 per cent, to 5,044.39.

Japan's Nikkei 225 index which was trading 0.3 per cent higher at 20,462, Hong Kong's Hang Seng index was trading 0.16 per cent higher at 23,960, and China's Shanghai index was trading 0.21 per cent higher at 3,894.