Markets open lower; Rupee weakness persists

Markets opened on a negative note this Friday extending yesterday’s losses while local currency traded at 59.70 levels.

Global risk appetite was hampered after Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke hinted towards tapering off the bond-buying programme popularly known as ‘quantitative easing’ sooner-than-expected once US economy shows sustainable signs of recovery.

At 9:20AM, the 30-share Sensex dropped 39 points at 18,680 and the 50-share Nifty shed 15 point at 5,640 levels.

Foreign institutional investors have been sellers in index futures for the past 14 out of 15 sessions, totalling Rs 99.17 billion.

Globally, Asian stocks traded lower amid looming uncertainty over the Federal Reserve’s bond-buying plans.

The Nikkei dropped 1 % to 12,911, Singapore Straits Times declined 0.5% to 3,115, Hong Kong’s Hang Seng declined 1.6% to 20,051 while China’s Shanghai Composite index was down 1% at 2,066.

Rate sensitive sectors were amongst the most hit in early trades on worries that the rising rupee would force the Reserve Bank of India to defer reduction in key policy rate going forward.

Realty index was one of the top loser among the sectoral indices on the BSE down 3.5% followed by Metal, Bankex, Capital Goods, Oil and Gas, Auto all down over 2% each.

In the financial segment, ICICI Bank was down 1% while SBI was down over 0.2% each.

Among the index heavyweights ITC and HDFC were both down over 1% each.

The gainers included counters such as TCS rising 1.2%, Infosys gained 0.4%, Reliance Industries was up 0.6% on the BSE.

The broader markets traded negatively with mid-caps and small-caps falling 0.1 per cent each on the BSE.

The market breadth was negative. Out of 516 stocks traded so far, 294 stocks declined while 195 advanced on the BSE.