Markets remain weak on profit taking in private banks

Private banking majors experienced profit taking at higher levels after they rebounded yesterday to end with gains

Markets trimmed early gains to trade in negative terrain after investors booked profits in rate sensitive shares with private sector banking majors among the top losers.

At 11:30AM, the 30-share Sensex was down 38 points at 19,532 after touching a high of 19,673 so far and the 50-share Nifty was down 4 points at 5,905 after touching a high of 5,946 so far.

Asian stocks edged higher on Friday on encouraging economic data from the US, the world's largest economy. Shanghai Composite led the gainers in the continent up 1.4% followed by Nikkei up 1.1%, Straits Times up 0.7% and the Hang Seng gained 0.5%.

Bankex was the top loser among sectoral indices on the BSE down 1% followed by Realty down 0.6%, Auto 0.4% followed by Oil & Gas and Capital Goods.

Private banking majors ICICI Bank and HDFC Bank were down 2.4% and 1.5%, respectively on profit taking at higher levels after gains in late trades yesterday.

Among other Sensex losers Tata Motors was down 1.6% at Rs 296 and index heavyweight Reliance Industries was down 0.6% at Rs 855.

Shares of software exporters firmed up on the back of encouraging economic data from the US. Infosys was up 0.9% at Rs 2,900 and TCS was up 0.4% at Rs 1,573. Motilal Oswal has a 'buy' call on Infosys. The brokerage believes that 3QFY13 may only have been the first quarter of a visible momentum in the company's growth, and that there is further upside in the stock from current levels, Motilal Oswal said in a report.

Other Sensex stocks which were marginally up include, HDFC, ONGC and Hindustan Unilever.

Among other shares, Linde India (formerly BOC India) has surged 18% to Rs 298 in otherwise weak market on back of heavy volumes on the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE). Linde India is one of the companies in which promoter hold more than 75% stake. The market regulator the Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) has mandated to the promoters of all listed companies in this country to reduce their stakes to 75% by June 2013. German parent, Linde AG Group currently holds 89.48% stake in the company, the shareholding pattern data shows.

Shares of Nalco were down over 7% after the government has fixed a floor price of Rs 40 a share for share auction today. The price is at a nearly 10% discount to the Thursday’s closing price of Rs 44.25 on the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE).

The broader markets were trading mixed with the Small-cap index down 0.1% and the Mid-cap index was trading flat with positive bias.

Market breadth was weak with 1,261 stocks declining and 1,022 stocks gaining.