The global cues are the bugbear of our markets yet again. With the Wall Street having a slippery session and the Asian markets having an unspectacular morning, our bourses were set to trip, atleast at opening bell. And so they have. The Sensex is quoting at 17229, lower by 36 points and the Nifty is at 5165, down 13 points. The midcap and smallcap indices are flat at 7005 and 8940 respectively.
The US markets were weighed down by caution expressed by the Cisco CEO John Chambers on the job market front. The Dow shed 114 points and the Nasdaq lost 30 points. And the Asian markets are down across the board, with the Hang Seng weakening by 175 points and the Nikkei losing 170 points.
The top Sensex losers are Jaiprakash Associates (weakened by 0.9% at Rs 132), Reliance Infra (shed 0.9% at Rs 1018) and M&M (shed 0.7% at Rs 561). Tata Motors, Tata Steel and ICICI Bank are the other notable losers. And among the Group A stocks, Aban Offshore has tanked by more than 11% at Rs 835 on news that its gas platform Pearl sunk near the Venezuelan coast.
On the gainers side, Bharti Airtel has strengthened by 1.8% at Rs 263, while ITC has added 1.5% at Rs 270 and ACC has gained by 0.6% at Rs 896.
The market breadth is neutral. Out of 1533 stocks traded on the BSE, there are 778 advancing stocks as against 699 declines.