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Markets ended lower weighed down by rate sensitives with bank stocks dragging key stock indices after the Reserve Bank of India maintained status quo on key rates.
The 30-share Sensex provisionally ended up 12 points at 28,516 while the 50-share Nifty ended flat at 8,660.
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(Updated at 2:30PM)
Markets continued to trade weak in late noon trades on Monday weighed down by rate sensitives with bank stocks dragging key stock indices after the Reserve Bank of India maintained status quo on key rates.
At 2:30PM, the 30-share Sensex was down 137 points at 28,367 while the 50-share Nifty slipped 44 points at 8,616
The rupee has shed 12 paise at 62.31 against the US dollar today at the Interbank Foreign Exchange due to appreciation of dollar overseas.
RBI POLICY
Reserve Bank Governor Raghuram Rajan on Tuesday held repo rate unchanged at 7.5 per cent, as expected. Further, the CRR or cash reserve ratio, which is the amount of deposits lenders must keep with the RBI, was also left unchanged at 4 per cent.
It may be recalled that the RBI Governor Raghuram Rajan had surprised the markets by announcing a cut in the repo rate by 25 basis points to 7.75% on 15 January 2015 and reduction in repo rate by 25 basis points to 7.5% on 4 March 2015.
SECTORS & STOCKS
BSE Realty Index was the top loser down 1.9% followed by Bankex, Healthcare, Auto and FMCG indices. Consumer Durables, Metal and Power indices were trading with marginal gains.
Financial shares were among the top losers on concerns of slowdown in incremental credit growth amid high interest rates. ICICI Bank, Axis Bank, SBI and HDFC Bank were down 0.4-1.7% each. IDFC was down 1.7%
Shares of housing finance and realty shares were down on worries that home loan growth could take a hit as new home buyers would refrain from housing finance to fund new home purchases. Mortgage lender HDFC was down 1% while realty shares such as NBCC, Oberoi Realty, Pheonix, Godrej Property, Unitech, Indiabulls Real Estate, Sobha Developers, DLF, Prestige Estates were down upto 4% each.
Auto stocks also witnessed profit taking on concerns that customers would postpone their vehicle purchases in the wake of high cost of auto loans. Tata Motors, Hero Motocorp, Axis Bank, ICICI Bank, Maruti Suzuki and HDFC Bank have slipped up to 2%.
State-run NTPC is up 2% as the state-owned firm is planning to reduce its coal import bill to 'zero' in the next five years and will rely on the fossil fuel made available by Coal India and the company's own mines.
Bajaj Auto rebounded after a decline in yesterday’s trade on reporting a 22% drop in motorcycle sales at 2,09,937 units in March. The stock was up 2.6%.
Buying interest is seen in metal stocks with Sesa Sterlite, Tata Steel and Hindalco up between 1-1.8%.
Larsen & Toubro was trading flat. The engineering major today said its construction arm has bagged orders worth Rs 5,492 crore across various segments in March.
However, the broader markets outperformed the benchmarks with BSE Mid-cap index up 0.5% and Small-cap index up 0.8%.
The overall breadth of the BSE midcap remains positive as 1,419 stocks are advancing while 1,191 stocks are declining.
