Pharma shares buck weak market trend

Markets continued to trade weak tracking their Asian peers

Markets continued to trade with negative bias in late noon trades on Monday tracking their Asian peers while the geo-political crisis in Ukraine also dampened market sentiment.

At 2:25PM, the 30-share Sensex was down 58 points at 22,630 and the 50-share Nifty was down 20 points at 6,763.

The rupee rebounded from its day's lows and was up at Rs 60.49 to the US dollar compared with its Friday close of 60.60. According to reports, broader advances in USD/INR are seen limited ahead of the US Federal Reserve's two-day policy meet which starts tomorrow.

Asian markets were trading lower as investors turned cautious amid the rising tensions in Ukraine and the upcoming meetings of central banks in Japan and the US. Further, investors are adopting a wait-and-watch stance ahead of US jobs data due on Friday. The Nikkei ended down 1% at 14,288. The Shanghai Composite was down 1.6% on talk that additional stimulus to boost the economy is unlikely, Hang Seng slipped 0.4% and Straits Times was trading 0.9% down.

However, European markets were trading firm with pharma shares among the most active following the merger and acquisition news among global pharma majors Pfizer and AstraZeneca. The CAC-40 was up 0.5%, DAX was up 0.6% and FTSE-100 was up 0.4%.

BSE FMCG, Capital Goods and Auto indices were among the top losers down 0.7-0.9 pct. However, Healthcare indices was the top gainer up 1.5%.

Capital goods majors BHEL and Larsen & Toubro were down over 1% each as investors booked profit after recent gains.

FMCG major Hind Unilever was down nearly 2% ahead of its March quarter earnings to be released later today. ITC was down 0.8%.

TCS, Tata Motors and Hero MotoCorp were among the other Sensex losers.

Meanwhile, positive corporate annoucements from select pharma firms improved sentiment in the sector. Sun Pharma was up 1.7%, Cipla gained 2.7% and Dr Reddys Labs was up 1.6%.

The BSE Mid-cap index was dup 0.7% and Small-cap index was up 0.3%.

Market breadth was positive with 1,327 losers and 1,297 gainers on the BSE.