Markets languish in red, but off day's low

The markets are currenly off the day's low, but still continue to trade with prominent losses. The Sensex is down 174 points at 16,287. The Nifty has declined 57 points at 4,877.
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(Updated at 1120 hrs)

The markets continued to trade weak and made feeble attempts to recover in late-morning trades. The BSE Sensex is at 16,286, down 176 points and the Nifty is at 4,872, down 62 points. Earlier in the day, the BSE benchmark index touched the day's high at 16,388 and a low of 16,199.

The broader markets are trading on a weak note too with the BSE mid-cap index at 5,652 and the small-cap index at 6,155, down 2% each.

Among the sectoral indices, BSE Realty, Capital Goods and Power indices are leading the losses, down nearly 3% each.

On the Sensex, BHEL has shed 6% at Rs 269. Other prominent losers from the pack are JP Associates, Tata Motors, Maruti Suzuki and ICICI Bank, down 3-5% each.

The gainers among the Sensex 30 stocks are Hero MotoCorp, Sun Pharma Industries, Cipla, Hindustan Unilever and HDFC, up marginally.

Among individual stocks, JSW Energy has shed nearly 6% at Rs 42.85 as the company got yet another jolt on Thursday, as Maharashtra Electricity Regulatory Commission (MERC) rejected its petition to pass on increased fuel costs to the state utility. The regulatory authorities have rejected JSW Energy's plea to revise power tariffs because of difficulty in procuring fuel from Indonesia.

Parsvnath Developers is trading lower by 20% at Rs 58 after the promoters of the company pledged 71% of their holding. "Parsvnath Developers promoters have pledged 71% of their holdings. At current market price the value of pledged shares is nearly Rs 1200 crore which is roughly half the size of current market cap of the entire company," reports suggest.

Suzlon Energy has shed nearly 7% at Rs 24 in morning trades after one of its promoter groups Samanvaya Holdings has sold 2.08% stake in the company for Rs 100.45 crore.

The overall market breadth is negative as 1,905 stocks have declined against 501 advancing ones, on the BSE.