Markets come of day's highs on profit taking

Markets came of their day's highs as investors booked profits at higher levels after both the benchmark indices cruised near their all-time highs.

At 10:35AM, the 30-share Sensex was up 62 points at 20,991 after hitting an intra-day high of 21,038 and the 50-share Nifty was up 17 points at 6,238 after touching an intra-day high of 6,254 so far.

The rupee weakened in early trade today due to dollar buying by importers. Sentiment was cautious ahead of the Federal Reserve's meeting this week.

At 10:35am, the rupee was trading at Rs 61.50 compared with previous close of Rs 61.32 per dollar. Currency dealers see the rupee trading in the range of Rs 61.30 to 62.50 for the rest of the day.

Asian markets were trading mixed as some of them gave up early gains amid profit taking at higher levels as investors adopted a wait-and-watch stance ahead of the FOMC meet which ends today. The Nikkei was up 1.1%, Hang Seng gained 0.9%, Shanghai Composite was up 0.8% and Straits Times gained 0.3%.

BSE Realty was the top gainers among the sectoral indices on BSE followed by Realty up 1.3%, followed by Healthcare, Bankex, FMCG, Power and IT among others.

ICICI Bank, Bharti Airtel, TCS and HDFC contributed the most to the Sensex gains.

Bharti Airtel gave some of its gains and was up 4.3% after the company today reported Q2 cosolidated net profit of Rs 512 crore. The revenue stood at Rs 21,324 crore in the quarter. Forex loss at was at Rs 342 crore. The company said that the continued depreciation of rupee contributed to forex loss. Consolidated EBITDA margin came in at 32%.

ITC also witnessed profit taking and was marginally up 0.1%.

In the financial pack, ICICI Bank was up nearly 2% while SBI and HDFC were up 0.3-1% each.

Sensex losers include, Infosys, L&T, M&M and Wipro amid profit taking at higher levels.

Among other shares, Shares of Financial Technologies (India) has soared 11% to Rs 175 on back of heavy volumes on the bourses. The stock opened at Rs 159 and touched high of Rs 184 on the National Stock Exchange (NSE). A combined 5.19 million shares representing 10% of total equity of the company have changed hands on the counter till 1010 hours. An average 2.4 million shares were traded daily in past two weeks on NSE and BSE.

In the broader market, the BSE-Mid cap was up 0.5% and Small-cap index was up 0.8%.

Market breadth was strong with 997 gainers and 665 losers on the BSE.