Nifty slips below 8,650; Welspun India slumps 20%

IT shares and ICICI Bank were among the top losers

Markets extended losses, amid weakness in their Asian peers, with IT majors and ICICI Bank  leading the decline

At 10am, the S&P BSE Sensex was down 66 points at 28,011 and the Nifty50 was down 27 points at 8,640.

Foreign institutional investors were net buyers in equities worth Rs 410 crore on Friday, as per provisional stock exchange data.

The government on Saturday appointed Urjit Patel, a Deputy Governor at the Reserve Bank of India, as the governor of India's central bank.

The appointment of Urjit Patel as the next Reserve Bank of India's governor signals a "strong likelihood of policy continuity," and policies rather than personalities would ultimately drive ratings, Fitch Ratings said on Sunday.

Among the financials HDFC and HDFC Bank were among the top index gainers while SBI extended gains and was up nearly 1% after the state-owned banking major last week announced the merger of its associate banks with itself.

FMCG majors ITC and Hindustan Unilever were among the top gainers on renewed buying interest.

However, IT shares were among the top losers with Infosys and TCS down 0.5%-1% each.

Among other shares, Welpsun India is locked in lower circuit of 20% at Rs 82.30 on the BSE in early morning trade as Bloomberg report suggest that Target Corp is ending all business with the textile manufacturers, after saying the supplier was sending it phony Egyptian cotton sheets.


GLOBAL MARKETS

Asian markets eased on Monday on expectations that indications of a rate hike could emerge from the the Federal Reserve at its Jackson Hole meet later this week. Except for the Nikkei which gained marginally on the weakness of the yen the Shanghai Composite was down 0.4%. Straits Times and Hang Seng were down 0.2%-0.5% each.

US stocks ended lower on Friday after investors booked profits on concerns that the US Federal Reserve could signal a hike in interest rates sooner than expected. The Dow Jones industrial average eased 0.2% at 18,553, the S&P 500 closed 0.1% lower at 2,184 and the Nasdaq ended flat with negative bias at 5,238.