As of 12:53 pm, the Sensex was down 159 points to 50,687
The Indian equity benchmarks came off intraday low levels on the back of buying in index heavyweight Reliance Industries, Maruti Suzuki and Larsen Toubro. However, weakness in banking and financial services shares weighed upon the benchmarks. The equity benchmarks staged a gap down opening on the back of weak global cure wherein the Sensex fell as much as 535 points and Nifty moved below 14,950. 15,000 on Nifty was seen as strong support level, analysts said. As of 12:53 pm, the Sensex was down 159 points to 50,687 and Nifty 50 index fell 43 points to 15,038.
Nine of 11 sector gauges compiled by the National Stock Exchange were trading lower led by the Nifty PSU Bank index’s over 3 per cent decline. Nifty Private Bank, Nifty Bank, Financial Services and Metal indexes also fell between 1-1.85 per cent. On the other hand, media and auto indices were trading with a positive bias.
Mid- and small-cap shares were also facing selling pressure as Nifty Midcap 100 index declined 1.2 per cent and Nifty Smallcap 100 index fell 0.7 per cent. IndusInd Bank was top Nifty loser, the stock fell 4.74 per cent to Rs 1,040. Wipro, UPL, State Bank of India, Tata Steel, Tata Motors, Hindalco, ICICI Bank, Grasim Industries, Bajaj Finserv, Shree Cements and HDFC also fell between 1-3 per cent.
On the flipside, GAIL India, ONGC, Maruti Suzuki, Hero MotoCorp, Bharat Petroleum, Titan, Kotak Mahindra Bank, Mahindra & Mahindra and Larsen & Toubro were among the gainers. The overall market breadth was negative as 1,585 shares were declining while 1,189 were trading higher on the BSE.