Indian shares edged lower in late morning trades on Tuesday on profit-booking in oil marketing companies after recent rally coupled with caution ahead of Oct-Dec earnings starting this Friday.
Global risk appetite was frail as investors were closely monitoring China’s trade data for December along with European Central Bank policy meet on Thursday amid split views over whether the bank will cut rates in 2013 after the regional economy shrunk for three straight quarters last year.
At 11:30AM, the 30-share Sensex of the Bombay Stock Exchange declined 21 points and traded at 19,670.56 and the 50-share Nifty fell 12 points and at 5,976.15.
Asian markets too traded on a weak note after earnings results from HTC Corp., Asia’s second-largest smartphone maker missed estimates. HTC,slipped 3.8 percent in Taipei today.
Meanwhile, Hong Kong's Hang Seng declined 0.62% to 23,185, Taiwan's Weighted index fell 0.6% to 7,706, Singapore's Straits Times was down 0.14% to 3,214 . Also China's Shanghai Composite dropped 0.23% to 2,280 while Japan's Nikkei declined 1% to 10,505.
On the domestic front, barring healthcare, FMCG and autos, all sectors indices dropped. Consumer durables, metals, capital goos, PSU and real-estate led fall on BSE.
More From This Section
Among key Sensex stocks, laggards included metals companies such as Sterlite, Jindal Steel, Hindalco and Tata Steel which fell over 1.5% each, among infrastructure names, Larsen & Toubro and BHEL dropped 2%, and 1% respectively while Infosys and Wipro dropped 1%, Reliance Industries shed 0.4% and among banks, ICICI Bank declined 0.4% on BSE.
The gainers included pharmaceuticals stocks such as Cipla, Sun Pharma and Dr Reddy's that rose 1-1.5%, among autos, Bajaj Auto, Mahindra & Mahindra and Tata Motors rose 0.3-0.6% while ITC was up 1% on BSE.
Oil companies dropped on profit-booking. HPCL , BPCL dropped 1-2% while Indian Oil shed 0.4% on BSE.
The other key notable movers include, telecom companies that gained today after the Empowered Group of Ministers (EGoM) on telecom on Monday decided to slash the reserve price for CDMA spectrum by 30%-50%.
Tata Teleservices rallied almost 5% to Rs 13.19, followed by Reliance Communications up 2.6% at Rs 84 and Bharti Airtel up 1% at Rs 330.
Bank of Maharashtra is trading higher by 3% at Rs 65.90 after the public sector bank announced fund raising plans up to Rs 200 crore through issue of equity shares.
Marico is trading higher by over 3% at Rs 235 after the board of directors of personal products maker has approved a proposal to restructure company’s businesses and corporate entities with effect from April 1, 2013 to unlock value
The broader markets declined too with mid-caps and small-caps shedding nearly 0.3-0.4% on BSE.
The market breadth was negative. Out of 2,512 stocks traded, 1,291 stocks declined compared to 1,091 advances on BSE.