Nifty flat after a gap-up start; Rupee weakens

Markets pared most of their opening gains and traded flat in the late-morning session this Monday on back of weak Rupee.

Investors turned jittery on back of foreign investor outflows from Indian equities that may escalate current account deficit woes.

At 11:30AM, the 30-share Sensex was up 53 points to trade at 18,573 and the 50-share Nifty rose 10 points at 5,482 levels.

Foreign Institutional Investors have sold about $750 million in equities over the previous six sessions.

The broader markets gained with mid-caps and small-caps rising 0.7 per cent on the BSE.

The market breadth was positive. Out of 1,947 stocks traded, 1,092 stocks advanced while 724 stocks declined on the BSE.

RUPEE

The rupee once again weakened against the dollar in early trades on Monday after a sharp recovery was recorded on Friday. The weakening was due to month-end dollar demand, said currency dealers.

At 11:35am, the rupee was trading at Rs 64.25 per dollar compared with Friday's close of Rs 63.35 on the Interbank Foreign Exchange .


GLOBAL MARKETS

Asian stocks rose for a second day after a slump in US home sales eased speculation the Federal Reserve will reduce economic stimulus next month.

Japan’s Nikkei was down 0.1% to 13,645, Singapore’s Straits Times rose 0.3% to 3,098, China’s Shanghai Composite index was up 1.4%  at 2,087 while Hong Kong’s Hang Seng added 0.5% to 21,979 today.

STOCK MOVERS

Domestically, the key sectoral gainers included IT, power, capital goods, metal and healthcare while oil & gas, bankex, auto, PSU indices leading fall on the BSE.

The gainers included bank shares such as Sterlite Industries rising 3.7%, Wipro gained 3.2%, BHEL added 3%, Hero MotoCorp was up 2.5% on the BSE.

The laggards were ONGC declining 3.2%, ICICI Bank fell 3%, Tata Steel dropped 2.4%, Tata Motors was down 2.4% on the BSE.

The key notable movers included counters such as Tech Mahindra which is trading higher by 3% at Rs 1,402, extending its past two days around 11% rally,  after foreign institutional investor, First State Investment Management (UK) on its own behalf and First State Investments International have bought 240,631 shares of the company via open market on August 21.

Shares of Vedanta Group companies Sesa Goa and Sterlite Industries (India) are trading higher by over 5% each ahead of merger of Sterlite Industries into Sea Goa. Meanwhile, Sesa Goa will replace Sterlite Industries in the Sensex from August 27.