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Markets continued to trade lower in late morning trades on Friday with rate sensitive leading the losses after comments from Reserve Bank of India Governor Raghuram Rajan suggested that interest rates may continue to remain high.
At 11:45AM, the 30-share Sensex was down 196 points at 21,177 and the 50-share Nifty was down 65 points at 6,280.
The rupee is at a two-week low tracking weak regional equities. The pair is at 62.22 versus Thursday's close of 61.92 and intraday high of 62.19, the highest since January 9.
Asian shares continued to trade weak, extending the previous day's losses as weak Chinese manufacturing data raised concerns over the economy. Shares in Japan also witnessed selling pressure tracking weak data from China and the yen appreciated against the US dollar.
Interestingly, China's Shanghai Composite was the only gainer in the region up 0.8%. The Nikkei slumped 2.5% while Hang Seng and Straits Times were down over 0.8% each.
The BSE Realty Index was the top loser among the sectoral indices on the BSE, down 2.1% followed by Capital Goods, Bankex, Auto, Power and Metal indices.
Except for TCS and Wipro all the other 28 stocks on the BSE were in the red.
Financials were among the top losers with ICICI Bank, HDFC Bank, HDFC and SBI were down 0.8-2% each.
FMCG shares also witnessed profit taking with both Hindustan Unilever and ITC down over 1.5% each.
Among capital goods shares, L&T was down 2% on profit taking after recent gains post its third quarter earnings. BHEL was down 3%.
In the auto sector, Tata Motors, M&M, Maruti Suzuki, Hero MotoCorp and Bajaj Auto were down 1-2.6% each.
Meanwhile, Ranbaxy shares continued to remain under selling pressure and was down nearly 18% at Rs 344 after the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) barred import of Active Pharmaceutical Ingredients or API, manufactured at the company’s Toansa facility in Punjab. The regulator also extended the ongoing consent decree with Ranbaxy’s three formulation facility in India to include Toansa unit.
In the broader market, the BSE Mid-cap index and BSE Small-cap indices were down over 1% each.
Market breadth was weak with 1466 losers and 676 gainers on the BSE.
