While global markets are crashing, the Sensex and Nifty fell much less today. Will the next big move be higher?

The market opened with a deep cut tracking the weak Asian markets on concerns about the damage in Japan and its impact on economic growth in the region. The indices dipped to their intra-day lows in the first hour of trade, but soon began a slow recovery. The benchmarks touched their intra-day highs in the post-noon session, but were still in the negative terrain. After another bout of selling, the market closed in the red. Baring the oil & gas sector, all other sectors ended lower.

The market opened with a sharp downward gap after Asian stocks were routed over the nuclear mess in Japan. At one point, Japanese stocks were down almost 14% and Hong Kong was down around 5%. But within half an hour of a weak opening, Indian stocks started moving up. From the low of the day of 17,921 and 5,374, the Sensex and Nifty rose all the way to 18,326 and 5,498.

However, in the late afternoon session, after the European markets went into a sharp decline and Dow futures was quoting down 250 points, Indian markets turned weak again. Indeed, given the rout that all markets around the world have suffered, the Sensex and Nifty have shown remarkable resilience. If the market does not break the recent lows, there is a chance it will move up. An upmove (or down move) of a large proportion (5-8%) is coming. The advance-decline ratio on the National Stock Exchange was a poor 340:1344.

The decline in the market resulted in the market breadth remaining negative. The Sensex ended with 28 losers and two gainers, whereas the Nifty returned with 43 declining stocks, six advancing stocks and one stock remained unchanged. The broader markets were also mauled in trade today. The BSE Mid-cap index sank 1.43% and the BSE Small-cap index tumbled 1.63%.

BSE Realty (down 3.14%), BSE Auto (down 2.03%), BSE Metal (down 2.02%), BSE Power (down 2.01%) and BSE Capital Goods (down 1.99%) were the worst performers in the sectoral space. BSE Oil & Gas (up 0.32%) was the lone gainer.

Reliance Industries (up 1.83%) and Reliance Communications (up 0.45%) were the only gainers in the Sensex list. Jaiprakash Associates (down 3.80%), Maruti Suzuki (down 3.55%), ONGC (down 3.42%), Sterlite Industries (down 3.25%) and DLF (down 3.15%) were the top losers on the index.

The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) may go in for yet another hike of key interest rates by 25 basis points (bps) at its policy review on Thursday to prevent food inflation from spreading to the manufacturing sector.

With inflation rising marginally to 8.31% in February, experts feel that the RBI could announce a 25 bps hike in its short-term lending (repo) and borrowing (reverse-repo) rates.

The Asian pack was sharply lower with the Nikkei 225 plunging in intra-day trade on news of a third explosion at the Fukushima nuclear power plant. The huge losses suffered by the Nikkei led the Japanese central bank to announce five trillion yen ($61 billion) in short-term funding-on top of a record 15 trillion yen yesterday-as it tried to instil confidence in the markets. The index recovered from the lows, but ended the day with a deep gash.

Other markets in the region also ended trade in the red as steelmakers and refining companies, which showed some resilience yesterday, were down today.

The Shanghai Composite was down 1.38%, the Hang Seng declined 2.86%, The Jakarta Composite fell 1.27%, the KLSE Composite was down 0.75%, the Nikkei 225 plunged 10.55%, the Straits Times tanked 2.63%, the Seoul Composite declined 2.40% and the Taiwan Weighted tumbled 3.35%.

Back home on Monday, foreign institutional investors were net buyers of stocks worth Rs414.35 crore. Domestic institutional investors were also net buyers of equities, albeit a small amount of Rs7.65 crore.

Auto major Mahindra & Mahindra (down 2.67%) today said it has completed the acquisition of a majority stake in South Korea's SsangYong Motor Company (SMC). M&M, which emerged as the preferred bidder for SsangYong in August 2010, will now hold a 70% stake in SMC, for which it has shelled out $463 million (about Rs2,105 crore).

IT services major Mahindra Satyam (up 0.22%) today said it has bagged a multi-million dollar, multi-year contract from Qatar-based Aspire Zone, one of the leading sports institutes in the world. As part of the contract, Mahindra Satyam will provide onsite and offshore support to Aspire on various application development and infrastructure services projects, Mahindra Satyam informed the Bombay Stock Exchange.

Bangalore-based value-added services provider OnMobile (up 0.74%) today announced a partnership with Starfish Mobile, a leading content aggregator, to offer ringback tones (RBT) and IVR (interactive voice response) to mobile subscribers in Africa.

Under the agreement, Starfish Mobile's content would be deployed on OnMobile's RBT & IVR technology platform, enabling telecom operators in the African continent to offer innovative music services to subscribers, the company said.