Nifty consolidating around 6,300; Power index down 4%

Markets continued to consolidate in late noon trades as investors booked profits after recent gains

Markets continued to consolidate in late noon trades on Tuesday as investors booked profits after the BJP's victory in three of the four states pushed the markets to all-time closing highs on Monday.

At 2:30PM, the 30-share Sensex was down 83 points at 21,243 and the 50-share Nifty was down 36 points at 6,328.

"After a sharp run up, now market may consolidate in between 6300 to 6450 levels. So if dips come they buy or trade in 6350 or 6400 strike calls," says Chandan Taparia, derivative analyst at Anand Rathi Financial Services.

The Indian rupee was trading marginally weak in late noon trades because of dollar buying by oil marketing companies.

At 2:10PM the rupee was trading at Rs 61.20 compared with previous close of Rs 61.14 per dollar.

The weakness in stock markets also impacted the currency.

Asian shares retreated on Tuesday as investors booked profit after sharp gains recently on the back of robust economic data from the US and China. The Shanghai COmposite was down 0.03%, Hang Seng slipped 0.3%, Nikkei ended down 0.25% and Straits Times was trading nearly 1% lower.

European shares were trading flat in early trades tracking their peers in Asia. The CAC was trading flat with negative bias while DAX and FTSE were trading with marginal gains.

The BSE Power index was the top loser among the sectoral indices on the BSE down 4.5% followed by Capital Goods, Bankex and Realty indices.

Shares of NTPC slumped 11% to Rs 136 after the Central Electricity Regulatory Commission (CERC) released draft regulations that will decide the multi-year power tariffs for 2014-2019.

In the financials space, ICICI Bank, HDFC, HDFC Bank and SBI were down 2-3.5% each on profit taking after recent gains.

Capital goods shares which have been steadily rising over the past few weeks also witnessed profit taking at higher levels. L&T was down 3.6% and BHEL was down 3.4%.

IT majors were trading higher tracking Weakness in the rupee. TCS and Infosys were up 1-3.5% each.

Among the index heavyweights ITC was up 1.5% and Reliance Industries gained 0.6%.

In the broader market, the BSE Mid-cap index was down 0.5% and Small-cap index was down 0.8%.

Market breadth continued to remain weak with 1,477 losers and 862 gainers on the BSE.