MUMBAI: Indian stock markets are likely to stay under pressure on Friday while trends in SGX Nifty indicate a soft opening of domestic benchmark indices. On Thursday, the BSE Sensex ended at 59,984.70, down 1158.63 points or 1.89%. The Nifty closed at 17,857.25, down 353.70 points or 1.94%.

Asian shares and US stock futures slipped on Friday, as Amazon and Apple quarterly earnings bucked a recent strong trend and growth and inflation fears continued to weigh.

Back home, Invesco on Thursday approached a division bench of the Bombay High Court to challenge the verdict of a single-judge bench of the court earlier this week that restrained the US fund manager from calling a special shareholders’ meet to remove Zee Entertainment Enterprises Ltd’s managing director Punit Goenka and also reconstitute the board.

InterGlobe Aviation Ltd, the operator of India’s top domestic airline IndiGo, plunged to a seventh consecutive quarterly loss as sharply higher fuel costs and fixed expenses outweighed robust growth in revenues. The company’s consolidated loss widened to Rs1,435.66 crore in the three months ended 30 September from Rs1,194.83 crore a year earlier.

Among key companies, Adani Transmission, Vedanta, Shree Cement, Bharat Petroleum, Dr Reddy's Laboratories, IRCTC, GAIL (India), JSW Energy, UPL, Cadila Healthcare, Bharat Electronics, Bandhan Bank, SAIL and Adani Power will release September results today.

Investors, particularly in bond and currency markets, are also worried about varied responses by central banks worldwide to rising inflation. MSCI’s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan was down 0.3% in early trading and was on track for a weekly loss of 1.3%, snapping three weeks of gains. Japan’s Nikkei reversed early losses to trade flat.

Asian shares were weighed by a fall in Nasdaq futures , which lost 0.73% as Apple Inc and Amazon Inc posted results after the close that missed expectations. S&P 500 futures lost 0.4%. Chinese shares fell the least, with local blue chips trading flat, though the Hong Kong benchmark lost 0.83%, once again weighed by mainland Chinese property stocks.

However, China Evergrande Group’s shares opened up 1.2% following news that the cash-strapped developer had made payments for an offshore bond coupon ahead of Friday’s expiry of a grace period, meeting its second dollar-bond repayment obligation this month. Overnight the S&P 500 and Nasdaq finished at record closing levels, while the Dow Jones Industrial Average closed just shy of its highest close.

As inflation concerns grow, central banks’ rate policies remain in focus. Yields on three-year bonds have surged 33 basis points this week alone to 1.08%, the largest rise since 2009. A month ago they were trading at 0.30%.Eurozone bond yields jumped on Thursday after European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde disappointed investors’ hopes she would calm their concerns over surging inflation and rate hikes. This sent the euro higher, gains it held in Asian hours on Friday at $1.1676.

Now all eyes are turning to the Federal Reserve, whose policy committee meets next week.

The dollar was weaker, largely on losses against the euro, with the dollar index, which measures the U.S. currency against other majors, at 93.381, just off its lowest level this month hit overnight. Benchmark U.S. 10-year yields were steady at 1.5677%. The gap between 5-year and 30-year yields was 79.2 basis points, having narrowed to as little as 73.4 basis points overnight, its tightest since March 2020, due to heightened expectation of a rate hike by the Federal Reserve next year.

Oil was steady with Brent crude flat at $82.72 a barrel, though on track for its first weekly fall in eight weeks. Spot gold was also flat at $1,797 an ounce.