The Indian equity benchmarks edged lower on account of profit booking on Friday after massive upmove in past couple of sessions which saw Sensex and Nifty hit four-month highs in the previous session. The Sensex fell as much as 220 points and Nifty 50 index touched briefly dropped below its important psychological level of 17,600.
As of 9:34 am, the Sensex was down 10 points at 59,322 and Nifty 50 index slipped 3 points to 17,653.
Asian markets were trading mixed as Japan's Nikkei rose 2.35 per cent, Hong Kong's Hang Seng was trading flat with minor gain of 0.04 per cent, Taiwan Weighted advanced 0.43 per cent and South Korea's KOSPI gained 0.04 per cent.
An afternoon pullback left stock indexes on Wall Street with a mixed finish Thursday, erasing most of their gains from a morning rally over new signs of cooling inflation.
The S&P 500 closed 0.1 per cent lower after having been up 1.1 per cent in the early going. The Nasdaq fell 0.6 per cent, while the Dow Jones Industrial Average eked out a 0.1 per cent gain.
The indexes got a big boost early on following a report showing inflation at the wholesale level slowed more than economists expected last month. The report, which came a day after a cooler-than-expected reading on inflation at the consumer level, bolstered hopes among investors that inflation may be close to a peak and that the Federal Reserve will be less aggressive about raising interest rates than feared.
