Nifty struggles to breach 6,100, ITC weighs

Markets remained weak in early noon deals on Tuesday and the broader markets outperformed the benchmarks

Markets remained weak in late morning trades on Tuesday with broader markets outperforming the benchmarks as investors booked profits at higher levels after sharp gains yesterday following the Iran deal.

At 11:50AM, the 30-share Sensex was down 98 points at 20,506 and the 50-share Nifty was down 30 points at 6,086.

Asian markets continued to trade weak with the exception of Hong Kong's Hang Seng which was trading flat with positive bias. Nikkei was down 0.4% after investors booked profits at higher levels after recent gains. The Shanghai Composite was down 0.1% and Straits Times was down 0.1%.

The Indian rupee continued to trade marginally higher against the US dollar because of dollar sales by banks. The rupee was up at 62.45 compared to its previous close of 62.50 against the US dollar.

FMCG index was the top loser among the sectoral indices down 0.7% on the BSE followed by IT, Auto, Bankex, Oil and Gas indices down 0.1-0.6% each.

ITC was down 1.4% contributing the most to the Sensex losses on profit taking at higher levels after recent gains.

"ITC has a strong support around 285 levels which would be a strict stoploss for all the long positions," says Ravi Nathani, technical analyst at Nsetoday.com.

IT shares also witnessed profit taking amid a strengthening rupee. Infosys and TCS were down 1-1.4% each.

Other Sensex losers include, Tata Motors and HDFC Bank.

Among other shares, Aban Offshore which surged 20% on Monday extended gains and was up another 5% today. Analysts said that the company was riding the US-Iran nuclear deal wave in the hopes that the exploration business would receive a boost once sanctions on Iran are lifted. Aban Offshore is a Chennai-based offshore oil exploration and production firm.

Sun Pharma Advanced Research Company (SPARC) has surged nearly 8% at Rs 156, in otherwise subdued market, on back of heavy volumes on the bourses. The stock opened at Rs 144 on BSE and has seen over four-fold jump in trading volumes. A combined 3.07 million shares representing 4% free-float equity of the company have changed hands on the counter till 1115 hours against an average less than 400,000 shares that were traded daily in past two weeks on BSE and NSE.

In the broader market, the BSE Mid-cap index was up 0.1% and the Small-cap index was also up nearly 1%.

Market breadth was negative with 1,017 losers and 915 gainers on the BSE.