Markets have trimmed early morning losses on the back of recovery in Metal and Capital Goods counters. The Sensex was down 31 points at 16,190 after touching a low of 16,118 in the morning trades and the Nifty was down 10 points at 4,911.
Meanwhile, the broader markets extended gains with the Mid-cap and the Small-cap indices adding 0.4-0.5% as compared to the benchmark index which was down 0.1%.
In the Asian markets, almost all the markets were trading in the red with Shanghai Composite, Hang Seng, Straits and Taiwan Weighed down 0.2-0.7%. However, Nikkei was flat with a positive bias.
Among the sectoral indices, Realty, Capital Goods, Metal, Bankex and Power indices gained between 0.1-0.9% in the late morning deals. However, Oil&Gas, Consumer durables and Auto slipped 0.3-0.5%.
Sterlite, Tata Steel, DLF, Sun Pharma and Hero MotoCorp up 1% each were the top gainers among the Sensex stocks.
Meanwhile, auto majors like Maruti Suzuki, Mahindra & Mahindra, Tata Motors down 1% each lead the losers list along with ONGC, Jindal Steel, HDFC and Tata Power.
Among individual stocks, Gravita India surged 10% to Rs 198.25, its lifetime high on the BSE, after face value of the stock was split to Rs 2 each from Rs 10 each effective from today.
Meanwhile, analysts at Goldman Sachs and Bank of America-Merrill Lynch cut their growth forecasts for India, following up on a Morgan Stanley downgrade earlier this week that had sparked much concern in domestic markets.
Goldman Sachs said it was cutting India's gross domestic product forecast to 6.6% from 7.2% for the fiscal year ending in March 2013, citing a weaker investment outlook on the back of domestic policy uncertainties. Merrill Lynch also downgraded its views, to 6.5% from 6.8% previously for fiscal 2012-13, though it cited the fallout from the euro zone crisis as its main rationale.
The market breadth remained positive as 1219 stocks advanced while 1000 stocks declined on the BSE.
