Markets volatile, sentiments jittery before Fed meet

Markets opened tad lower but recovered a little this Wednesday as sentiments were jittery ahead of key global and local events this week.

Risk appetite was fragile ahead of theFederal Reserve Open Market Commitee (FOMC) meeting starting from today which 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 9:20AM, the 30-share Sensex fell 32 points to trade at 19,709 and the 50-share Nifty dropped 12 points at 5,828 levels.

Meanwhile fears over the Reserve Bank of India's stance after country’s Wholesale Price Index (WPI) Inflation surged to over 6-month high also loomed.

The Wholesale Price Index (WPI) based inflation rose to a six-month high of 6.1%  in August against 5.79 in July, according to the data released by Ministry of Commerce and Industry today.

The broader markets traded lower with mid-caps and small-caps shedding 0.1 per cent on the BSE.

The market breadth was almost flat. Out of 486 stocks traded, 228 stocks declined while 241 stocks advanced on the BSE.


RUPEE

The rupee lost some strength against the dollar in today’s trade.

At 9:15AM, the partially convertible rupee was trading at 63.45 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.