)
Markets continued to remain weak in late morning trades on Friday amid profit taking in oil and gas shares.
At 11:30AM, the 30-share Sensex was down 94 points at 20,729 and the 50-share Nifty was down 28 points at 6,159.
The rupee weakened in morning trade today due to dollar buying by banks for corporates.
At 11:20 am, the rupee was trading at Rs 62.66 compared with previous close of Rs 62.42 per dollar. According to currency dealers, later during the day the Reserve Bank of India may intervene to arrest significant weakness.
Asian share indices continued to remain weak tracking overnight losses on Wall Street with Japan's Nikkei down over 1% as investors remained cautious ahead of US jobs data later today. The Nikkei was down 1.1% while the Straits Times was down 0.5%. China's Shanghai Composite was down 0.7% while Hang Seng was down 0.5%.
The BSE Consumer Durables index was the top loser among the sectoral indices down 1.2% followed by Oil & Gas, Bankex and Capital Goods.
In the oil and gas segment, Reliance Ind was down 0.7% at Rs 880 and PSU exploration major ONGC was down nearly 2% at Rs 278.
HDFC group shares also witnessed profit taking, with HDFC and HDFC Bank down 0.8-2.4% each.
Other Sensex losers include TCS, Maruti Suzuki and Gail (India).
Tata Motors and Infosys contributed the most to the Sensex gains followed by ICICI Bank, Tata Steel, Sesa Sterlite and Bharti Airtel. Tata Motors is trading weak ahead of its September quarter earnings while Infosys is witnessing profit taking after recent gains.
Among other shares, Aurobindo Pharma has surged nearly 10% at Rs 262 after reporting a healthy 80% year-on-year (yoy) growth in consolidated net profit at Rs 245 crore for the quarter ended September 30, 2013 (Q2) on back of strong operational performance. The pharmaceutical company had profit of Rs 136 crore in a year ago quarter.
In the broader market, the BSE Mid-cap and Small-cap indices were trading with marginal gains.
Market breadth was slightly negative with 989 losers and 922 gainers on the BSE.
