The Indian market started fresh session on a positive note ahead of Reserve Bank of India's monetary policy announcements on Friday. Benchmarks Nifty 50 and the Sensex opened nearly 0.4% higher as the former started near 17,700, while the latter added more than 250 points. The two indices opened at 17,698.15 and 59,256.97 respectively.  

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"Today's monetary policy is unlikely to impact the market significantly even if there is a surprising rate hike. That would be interpreted by the market positively indicating that the RBI is not behind the curve. The real concern for the market, going forward, would be the aggressive rate   hikes and quantitative tightening by the Fed expected in the coming 12 months," said V K Vijayakumar, Chief Investment Strategist at Geojit Financial Services.

The MPC will certainly raise inflation targets for FY 23 and flag inflation concerns, he said. "This will have a short-term negative sentimental impact on rate sensitives. Segments like telecom, IT, pharma and metals which are unlikely to be impacted by higher inflation are in a safe zone. Crude softening to around $100 is a positive while FIIs again turning sellers will provide ammunition to the bears," added the expert.

Meanwhile, outperforming benchmarks, Nifty mid cap and small cap opened slightly higher by around 0.6%. Sectorally, metal and oil & gas indices rose most as all sectoral indices sat in the green in the early trade. 

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In the pre-open, the Sensex gained nearly 300 points as 25 shares turned green and 5 traded in the negative zone on the 30-share index. 

SGX Nifty Futures was trading flat with marginal gain of 10 points on the Singaporean exchange just before the market opening.  

Meanwhile, in the early trade on Friday, global stocks headed for a weekly loss on Friday as the prospect of aggressive global rate hikes finally began to rattle investors, while bonds fell and the dollar looked set for its best week in a month, as per Reuters.   

MSCI`s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan was steady in morning trade and down about 1.5% for the week so far. Japan`s Nikkei fell 0.2% on Friday to head for a weekly loss of nearly 3%.  

A late rally had lifted Wall Street indices modestly on Thursday, but they are also all down for the week led by a 2.5% loss for the rates-sensitive Nasdaq. U.S. futures were flat.