The benchmark indices have lost their way in late-noon trades following profit-booking in the IT space. The Sensex has slipped below the 19k mark and is now quoting at 18934, lower by 160 points and the Nifty is at 5670, down 53 points. But there is outperformance on the broader market front; the midcap and smallcap indices are absolutely flat at 7156 and 8894 respectively.
The markets began the day's proceedings on a subdued note as the buoyancy witnessed on the previous day did not trigger follow-up buying, as one would have expected. It may be recollected that the BSE Sensex had catapulted by 224 points in Tuesday's session on the back of gains in the IT pack. Paradoxically, it is the information technology pack which is leading the downside this afternoon, in what is an apparent case of profit-booking after the stellar gains preceding the Infosys results and following the TCS numbers.
Infosys has weakened by 2.1% at Rs 1646, TCS, which rode to an all-time high in the previous session on the back of a consolidated net profit growth of 9.24%, has shed 1.2% at Rs 1187, and Wipro has lost 1.1% at Rs 473 ahead of its Q3 results. However, HCL Technologies is trading higher by 3.4% at Rs 515 after reporting a 21% growth in consolidated net profit at Rs 400 crore in the second quarter as against Rs 331 crore in the previous quarter, despite a revenue growth of 5% at Rs 3,888 crore from Rs 3,708 crore on q-o-q basis.
On the other hand, metals are continuing from where they left on Tuesday. Sterlite has strengthened by 2.9% at Rs 182, Hindalco has jumped by 2.5% at Rs 235 and Tata Steel has added 0.8% at Rs 638.
The market breadth is marginally positive, though. Out of 2925 stocks traded on the BSE, there were 1404 advancing stocks as against 1395 declines.