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Markets continued to exhibit weakness in noon trades on Friday, amid weak Asian cues, because of profit taking in oil and gas shares.
At 2:40PM, the 30-share Sensex was down 66 points at 20,822 and the 50-share Nifty was down 17 points at 6,204.
The rupee fell to a one-month low on Friday, extending losses for a third consecutive session, as the dollar strengthened against emerging Asian currencies and as a bout of risk aversion hit local stocks.
The partially convertible currency fell to as much as 62.53 to a dollar, a level last seen on December 4, as against Thursday's close of 62.26. It was last trading at 62.47.
Asian markets were trading weak with Hang Seng recordig a fall of over 2% while Shanghai Composite and Straits Times were down over 1% each.
The BSE Oil & Gas, Power, Metal, Capital Goods indices were down over 1% each while IT index was up 2%.
In the oil and gas space Reliance Ind and ONGC were down 2% each contributing the most to Sensex losses.
Tata Motors was down over 3% after the company late Thursday reported a 42.28% year-on-year decline in its total vehicle sales at 37,852 units in December 2013. The company had sold 65,582 units in the same month last year.
Coal India was down over 2% after it recorded an output of 319.19 million tonnes for the April-December period, missing the target by 4.5%. The world's largest coal miner has set a production target of 334.44 mn tonne for the nine-month period.
However, IT shares firmed up with Infosys, TCS and Wipro up 2.5% each.
In the broader market the BSE Mid-cap was up 0.2% while the Small-cap index was trading flat with negative bias.
Market breadth was negative with 1,286 losers and 1,068 gainers on the BSE.
