Markets come off day's highs; Axis Bank up 2%

Markets witness profit taking at higher levels after hitting 3-week highs

Markets which touched 3-week highs in early deals amid renewed buying interest from foreign institutional investors have witnessed profit taking in noon trades.

At 1:05PM, the Sensex was up 143 points at 21,283 after touching an intra-day high of 21,331 and the Nifty was up 42 points at 6,343 after hitting an intra-day high of 6,358 so far.

India's manufacturing sector ended the year 2013 on a bit of pessimistic note as growth fell in December against the previous month, showed the widely-tracked HSBC purchasing managers' index (PMI). However, consumer segment of the manufacturing, which had faced the heat of slow down, showed some signs of uptick.

The PMI was down at 50.7 points in December from 51.3 in the previous month. This is the second month in a row when manufacturing activities registered a growth after falling since August. A reading above 50 points shows a growth, while the one below is a contraction.

The rupee was trading flat due to dollar sale by exporters. At 1PM, the rupee was trading unchanged at Rs 61.91 compared with previous close of Rs 61.91 per dollar. Gains in equities also helped boost sentiment.

Foreign institutional investors (FIIs) were net buyers in equities worth Rs 10.16 crore on Wednesday, 1 January 2014, as per provisional data from the stock exchanges.

Except for the capital goods index which was down 0.2% all other sectoral indices on the BSE were in positive zone led by Bankex which was up 1.6%.

In the financial space, Axis Bank was up nearly 2% followed by SBI, HDFC Bank, ICICI Bank and HDFC which gained between 1.3-1.9% each contributing the most to the Sensex gains.

IT majors which underwent correction in the past few sessions also firmed up today. TCS and Infosys were up 0.5-1.6% each.

In the capital goods space, BHEL and L&T were down over 0.5% each.

Among other shares,  Ricoh India is locked in upper circuit of 5% at Rs 137 after the company has fixed the delisting price, at which the promoter may be willing to accept the equity shares tendered in the delisting offer. The company has fixed an indicative price of Rs 120 per share, a more-than-double than the floor price of Rs 58.01 fixed in November 18, 2013.

Zyden Gentec is locked in lower circuit for eight straight day, down 5% at Rs 15.25 on the BSE, after the Punjab National Bank (PNB) have offloaded around one-third of its holding in the company via open market.

In the broader market, the BSE Mid-cap index was up 0.8% and the Small-cap index was up 0.9%.

Market breadth continued to remain strong with 1,473 gainers and 804 losers on the BSE.