Markets remain range-bound; telecom stocks sink

Markets were trading flat with cement shares among the top losers after CCI imposed a penalty on select companies for cartelisation.

Shares of Bharti Airtel and Idea Cellular lost up to 8% on the bourses after Mukesh Ambani, Chairman of Reliance Industries (RIL) at the company's annual general meeting today announced the launch of Reliance Jio 4G services offering free voice calls for Jio customers and zero roaming charges across India from September 5 to December 31, 2016.

Idea Cellular has dipped 8% to Rs 86.10, also its 52-week low on the BSE after the news report. Bharti Airtel slipped 5.5% to Rs 313, as compared to 0.03% rise in the S&P BSE Sensex.

At 12:05 pm, the S&P BSE Sensex was down 17 points at  28,435 and the Nifty50 was down 8 points at 8,778.

Foreign institutional investors were net buyers in equities worth Rs 854 crore on Wednesday, as per provisional stock exchange data.

ICICI Bank, ITC and Tata Motors were among the top gainers.

HDFC was trading higher after the company on Wednesday informed exchanges that it was opening the second tranche of its rupee denominated Masala bonds offering to raise another Rs 500 crore.

Auto shares continued to gain momentum led by Tata Motors, M&M , Maruti Suzuki and Hero MotoCorp.

Reliance Industries was trading with marginal losses ahead of its AGM later today.

Cement shares eased after the Competition Commission of India (CCI) has imposed more than Rs 6,700 crore penalties on 11 cement companies for cartelisation.

Among the individual stocks, Jaiprakash Associates was down 3% at Rs 11.31 on the BSE. JK Cement, Ambuja Cement, ACC, UltraTech Cement, Ramco Cements, India Cements, Shree Cement and Ambuja Cements were down 1%-2% on the BSE.

GLOBAL MARKETS

Asian markets were subdued tracking overnight losses on Wall Street amid weak crude oil prices while official August manufacturing data from China failed to boost sentiment. Japan's Nikkei was up 0.2% while Shanghai Composite was down 0.2%. Straits Times was up 0.3% while Hang Seng gained 0.6%.

US stocks ended lower on Wednesday with energy shares among the top losers tracking weakness in crude oil prices. The Dow Jones ended down 0.3% at 18,400, S&P 500 slipped 0.2% at 2,171 and the Nasdaq ended down 0.2% at 5,213.