The Indian equity benchmarks opened lower on Thursday as indicated by the SGX index. At 9:18 am, BSE Sensex was down 155 points or 0.28 per cent at 55,255 whereas the Nifty 50 index slipped 55 points or 0.34 per cent at 16,467.
The Nifty Midcap 50 index was up 0.18 per cent at 7,812, whereas the Nifty Midcap 100 index was up 0.9 per cent at 28,326. Barring IT, Media, Metal, Pharma, banking and reality stocks, all other sectoral indices were trading in red.
The major indices in the US were trading lower on Wednesday. The S&P 500 was down 30.92 points or 0.7 per cent to 4,101, whereas the Dow Jones Industrial Average slipped 176.89 points or 0.5 per cent to 32,813. The Nasdaq Composite index fell 86.93 points or 0.7 per cent to 11,994.
Meanwhile, the major indices in Asia were trading lower amidst weak global cues. Japan’s Nikkei 225 was down 0.24 per cent at 27,389, whereas Hang Seng Index slipped 1.28 per cent. South Korea’s KOSPI was trading 1.01 per cent lower in early trade. While Shanghai Composite was down 0.24 per cent, China’s Shenzhen Component slipped 0.19 per cent.
Back home, amongst the Nifty 50 listed companies, TCS, Reliance, Cipla, Wipro and Infosys were the top gainers, whereas Hero MotoCorp, Apollo Hospitals, SBI Life, PowerGrid and Tata Consumer Products Limited were the top losers. Amongst the BSE listed companies, TCS, Reliance, Wipro, Infosys, Tata Steel, Dr Reddy, HCL Technologies, Asian Paint, Tech Mahindra and Sun Pharma were the only top gainers, whereas PowerGrid, NTPC, HDFC Twins, Bharati Airtel and Larsen & Toubro were the top losers.
The foreign institutional investors (FII) remained the net sellers worth Rs 1,930 crore, whereas the domestic institutional investors (DII) remained the net buyers worth Rs 984 crore on Thursday, according to the data available on NSE.
The crude oil prices were trading lower on Thursday. The Brent crude oil benchmark fell $2.76 or 2.4 per cent at $113.53 per barrel at 0024 GMT, whereas the US West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude was down $2.89 or 2.9 per cent to $112.37 per barrel. Rupee recovered 71 paise higher to close at 77.50 against US Dollars.
Vedanta, Eicher, Maruti Suzuki, Reliance Industries, and Bharat Petroleum Corporation Limited (BPCL) are the stocks in focus today.
