Markets recover from day's lows; Nifty hovers at 8,300

Banking and oil stocks are aiding the recovery, while IT and auto stocks continue to trade weak.

The markets have recovered from the lows of the day, aided by a rebound on the banking and oil couunters.

At 10.30am, the Sensex had recovered around 150 points from its intra-day lows of 27,363 and was at 27,507, down 24 points and the Nifty was at 8,321, down 18 points.

The broader markets were also listless, with the midcap and smallcap indices shedding about 0.2% each at 10,609 and 11,138 respectively.

The impending derivative expiry on Thursday is likely to add volatility to the market proceedings, given the rollovers from the ongoing May F&O series to the June series. Moreover, traders would be cautious ahead of gross domestic product (GDP) data due on 29 May and Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI’s) bi-monthly policy preview on 2 June

RUPEE

Continuing its weakness for the third straight day, the rupee dropped below the 64 mark, falling 17 paise, to quote at 64.15 against the dollar in early trade today at the Interbank Foreign Exchange as the American currency firmed up overseas on strong economic data.

Besides, increased demand for the dollar from importers and a lower opening in the domestic equity market weighed on the local currency, forex dealers said.

RESULTS CALENDAR

Aban Offshore, Bata India, Engineers India, GAIL (India), Jindal Steel, Reliance Infra, Tata Comm and TTK Prestige will declare their Q4 results during the day.

SECTORS AND STOCKS

IT and auto stocks are doing the most damage this morning, while the banking and oil stocks are rendering support to the indices.

In the IT space, Tech Mahindra nosedived 12% at Rs 564 after its consolidated net profit for the quarter stood at Rs 472 crore, down 23% versus Rs 614.2 crore in the year-ago period. Infosys, Wipro and NIIT have lost 1-2% each.

In the auto space, Tata Motors has tanked 5.3% to Rs 470 after the company reported lower-than-expected consolidated net profit at Rs 1,717 crore for the fourth quarter ended March 31, 2015 (Q4) on account of lower-than-expected operating performance at Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) and mark-to-market (MTM) loss provisioning at JLR (on commodity hedges and revaluation of foreign currency debt). M&M is the other key loser, shedding around 1%.

On the other hand, banking and oil stocks have rebounded back in the green.

In the banking space, Axis Bank, ICICI Bank, SBI and HDFC Bank have added upto 1% each. In the oil space, IOC, BPCL, HPCL and ONGC have added 1-2% each.

IDBI Bank has rallied 5% to Rs 70 in an otherwise subdued market after the public sector lender reported an improvement in its asset quality for the January-March quarter (Q4) on a sequential basis.

Ballarpur Industries has surged by 11% to Rs.14.73 after the company reported a 41.7% increase in its March quarter net profit to Rs.26.45 crore compared with Rs.18.67 crore a year ago.

The market breadth is weak. Out of 2,055 stocks traded on the BSE, there are 909 advancing stocks as against 1,060 declines.