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At 1:09PM, the 30-share Sensex was down 117 points at 28,548 and the 50-share Nifty was down 64 points at 8,641.
In the broader market, both the BSE Midcap index, down 0.7% and Smallcap index, down 0.5% have underperformed the front-liners. Market breadth in BSE is negative with 1,305 declines against 1,240 advances.
Buzzing Stocks
Eight out of the 12 sectoral indices of BSE are in red. BSE IT index down 1.8% is the top loser followed by BSE Healthcare index, down 1.4%. BSE Metal index up 1.7% is the top gainer.
Metal shares are the big gainers in today’s session led by Tata Steel, up nearly 4% on high production in the financial year 2014-15. The steel major has achieved its highest ever annual sales volume of 8.75 MT in the recently concluded fiscal. Sesa Sterlite is up over 3% and Hindalco has gained nearly 3%. India's largest investor Life Insurance Corp (LIC) has increased its stake in Hindalco.
RIL is trading higher by 0.7% ahead of its its January-March 2015 quarter results later during the day. Analysts expect the company to post a record fourth quarter net profit as benefitting from refining margins, which will be partially offset by lower petrochemical margins. From the oil and gas sector, ONGC is up 0.8% while GAIL is down nearly 2%.
FMCG majors, ITC and HUL have 0.3% and 0.8% each. SBI, up 0.7% and HDFC up 0.3% have gained among the financials.
Banking stocks are otherwise under pressure. ICICI Bank, HDFC Bank and Axis Bank have lost 0.7%, 0.9% and 1.1% respectively. Foreign portfolio investors have pared their holdings in at least 21 banks in the March quarter (fourth quarter, or Q4) on concerns of deteriorating asset quality and the impact it would have on earnings of the lenders, according to media reports.
TCS has lost nearly 4% after the company’s fourth-quarter revenues fell 1.1 percent to Rs 24,220 crore with EBIT falling 0.5 percent to Rs 6,591 crore while net profit (adjusted for one-time employee bonus) rose 8.4 percent to Rs 5,906 crore. Tracking the weakness, Wipro has lost over 2% and Infosys is down 0.5%.
