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Markets dropped in the late afternoon session this Wednesday on concerns over growth recovery in China after exports in the world’s second-biggest economy fell for the first time in 17 months.
Trading was also on a cautious note as investors awaited the results of Infosys, the bellwether stock of the Information Technology index to kick-start the earnings season on Friday.
At 2:20PM, the Sensex was down 117 points at 19,322 while the Nifty shed 33 points to trade at 5825.
Asian shares traded mixed as focus now lies on the Fed minutes, due after the European market close, and on comments from an ECB policymaker on Tuesday that the bank plans to keep interest rates low for more than a year.
Japan’s Nikkei 225 was down 0.4% to 14,416, Singapore’s Straits Times rose 0.4% to 3,192, Hong Kong’s Hang Seng was up 1% to 20,904 today.
Back home, among the key sectoral indices, auto, oil and gas, FMCG, metal and reaty declined while consumer durables and IT rose on the BSE.
The top gainers among the Sensex-30 were Tata Power, ICICI Bank, Wipro, Sun Pharma, SBI, Jindal Steel and Infosys adding 0.6-1.5%.
From the Auto space, Tata Motors, Mahindra & Mahindra, Hero MotoCorp, Bajaj Auto and Maruti Suzuki lost 0.2-1.3%.
The key notable movers included counters such as Hindustan Unilever (HUL) which is trading lower by 2% at Rs 593 after the stock turning ex-dividend today.
The fast moving consumer goods company (FMCG) said that the register of members and share transfer books of the company will remain closed from July 12, 2013 to July 26, 2013 (both days inclusive) for the purpose of payment of final dividend.
Shares of MMTC locked in lower circuit for 20 straight trading sessions, is down 5% at Rs 68.45 on BSE.
The stock of state-owned trading company has tanked nearly 70% in past one month from Rs 218 on June 12, 2013 after the Government of India (GoI) fixed the share sale price at Rs 60 per share, a huge discount to prevailing market price.
The broader markets traded lower with mid-caps and small-caps falling 0.1-0.3 per cent on the BSE.
The market breadth is negative. Out of 2,344 stocks traded so far, 1,115 declined compared to 1,097 advances on the BSE.
