Nifty trades below 5,800; Oil&Gas, Auto shares slump

Shares of railway stocks plunge up to 9% as no major announcements were made in the Rail Budget

Markets continued to languish in the red tracking weak global cues and selling in the heavyweights like Reliance Industries, ICICI Bank and HDFC. Also, there were no positive surprises in the Railway Budget 2013-14 which was presented by the Railway Minister, Pawan Kumar Bansal in the lower house of the Parliament.

At 1350 hrs, the Sensex was down 231 points at 19,101 and the Nifty cracked below the long standing support level of 5,800, to trade at 5,785.

BSE Oil & Gas index declined by almost 2.5% followed by counters like Auto, Capital Goods, PSU and Metal, all plunging by almost 2% each. Apart from IT and FMCG, all the major BSE sectoral indices are trading in red zone.  

The main losers on the Sensex at this hour include Tata Motors, ONGC, Hindalco, ICICI Bank, RIL, Bajaj Auto and Tata Steel, all falling down between 3-4%.

Shares of companies which are dependent on Railways for revenues have plunged up to 9% in noon deals as no major announcements made by the railway minister in its Rail Budget today.

Kernex Microsystems (India), Titagarh Wagons, Kalindee Rail Nirman (Engineers), Hind Rectifiers and Stone India are trading lower by 7-9.5% on the Bombay Stock Exchange.

Meanwhile, Bartronics India (up 2.5%) and Zicom Electronic Security Systems (up 2.4%) are up more than 2% each after railway minister proposed electronic display in trains for giving real time updates of coming trains, stations.

The broader markets are under performing the benchmarks. The market breadth in BSE remains weak 1,978 shares declining and 678 shares advancing.