Markets continue to remain rangebound, L&T weighs

Markets continued to trade flat with negative bias in late morning trades as gains in IT majors failed to offset losses in autos and metal shares.

At 11:45AM, the 30-share Sensex was down 40 points at 20,685 and the 50-share Nifty was down 19 points at 6,145.

The rupee was trading marginally weak in early trades due to month-end dollar demand from importers.

At 11:40am, the rupee was trading at Rs 61.63 compared with previous close of Rs 61.47 per dollar.

The rupee may weaken further during the day due to demand for dollars by importers, said currency dealers. Currency dealers see the rupee trading in a range of Rs 61.25 to Rs 62.00 today.

Asian markets remain subdued for most part of the trading session today. The Nikkei was down over 2% amid a stronger yen, while Shanghai COmposite fell 0.8% and Hang Seng was down 0.6%. Straits Times was marginally down 0.2%.

Capital Goods index was the top loser among the sectoral indices on the BSE down 1.7% followed by Realty, Metal, Healthcare and Auto indices all down over 1% each.

Engineering major L&T was down 2% on profit taking after recent gains while Sun Pharma slipped 2.5%. Both stocks contributed the most to the Sensex decline.

Hindustan Unilever, M&M, Tata Motors, Tata Steel and Hindalco were the other Sensex losers.

Among other shares, Ipca Laboratories is trading higher by 3% at Rs 694, extending its previous day’s 2% gain in otherwise weak market, after reporting over 400 bps year on year (yoy) improvement in EBITDA or operating margins at 27.70% for the quarter ended September 2013 (Q2) against 23.28% in year ago quarter.

The brooader market was also marginally down with BSE Mid-cap and Small-cap indices down 0.2% each.

Market breadth was weak with 1,128 losers and 858 gainers on the BSE.