Markets listlessly await Bernanke's decision

Markets traded tad lower in the morning session this Tuesday on back of selling pressure witnessed in realty and bank shares amid caution ahead the Reserve Bank of India's monetary policy later this week.

Meanwhile, the Federal Reserve Open Market Commitee (FOMC) meet on September 17-18 will be key in terms of any tapering of $85 billion monthly bond purchases that led to significant inflows in the emerging markets especially India so far.

At 10:30AM, the 30-share Sensex dropped 32 points to trade at 19,710 and the 50-share Nifty fell 16 points at 5,824 levels.

The broader markets traded lower with mid-caps and small-caps shedding 0.4 per cent on the BSE.

The market breadth was negative. Out of 1,571 stocks traded, 883 stocks declined while 607 stocks advanced on the BSE.


RUPEE

The rupee lost some strength against the dollar in today’s trade tracking the non-deliverable forwards (NDF) market. One month NDF was quoting at Rs 64.06.

Besides that there is also dollar demand from importers, which is putting pressure on the rupee.

At 10:35AM, the partially convertible rupee was trading at 63.49 per dollar against the yesterday’s close of 62.85 on the Interbank Foreign Exchange.

GLOBAL MARKETS

Asian stocks fell, with the benchmark regional index declining from a four-month high, as the Federal Reserve begins a two-day policy meeting at which it is forecast to reduce the pace of its U.S. bond buying.

Japan’s Nikkei gained 0.2% to 14,422, Singapore’s Straits Times gained 0.2% at 3,186, China’s Shanghai Composite index fell 0.7% at 2,215 while Hong Kong’s Hang Seng added 1.4% to 23,252 today.

STOCK MOVERS

Domestically, the key sectoral indices gainers were IT, PSU, metals while consumer durables, FMCG, bankex indices dropped on the BSE.

The gainers included counters such as Bharti Airtel was up 1%, Infosys gained 0.7%, NTPC added 0.6% on the BSE.

The laggards were Tata Motors declined 1%, HDFC Bank was down 0.8%, ITC fell 0.5% on the BSE.