Weakness persists weighed down by financials

Markets were trading over 1% lower in late morning trades on Monday, amid a weakening rupee, with financial shares leading the decline. Further, worries over outflows by foreign institutional investors also weighed on market sentiment.

The rupee today fell by a massive 97 paise to breach the 61-mark to 61.19, a new all-time low, against the dollar in early trade at the Interbank Foreign Exchange market, on heavy demand for the American currency amid capital outflows.

Forex dealers said firming up of dollar against other currencies in overseas markets put pressure on the domestic currency.  

At 11:50AM, the Sensex was down 238 points or 1.2% at 19,258 and the Nifty dropped by 78 points or 1.3% at 5,790.

Asian stocks continued to remain weak with Japan's Nikkei erasing all its early gains. The benchmark index was now down 0.9%. Strait Times, Hang Seng and Shanghai Composite were down 0.7-2.1% each.

The BSE Realty index was the top loser among the sectoral indices on the BSE down 2.3% followed by Auto, Oil and Gas, Metal, Bankex and Power indices.

Tata Motors is the top Sensex loser, down 4.3% on reports that the production line at Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) facilities in the UK may get impacted after delivery workers from DHL voted for a strike.

In the oil and gas space, Reliance Industries and ONGC were down over 2% each.

Financials shares were also among the top Sensex losers with HDFC, ICICI Bank, HDFC Bank and SBI down 1-3.5% each.

Other losers include, L&T, Mah&Mah and ITC.

Bharti Airtel was the top Sensex gainer up 2.2% after the company said it has retired debt of Rs 6,796 crore.

Software exporters gained tracking weakness in the rupee. Infosys and Wipro were up 0.6-1.5% each.

In the defensive space, all major pharma companies viz Sun Pharma, Dr Reddy's Labs and Cipla were up 0.7-1.0% each.

Among other shares, Shares of Mangalore Refinery and Petrochemicals (MRPL) has surged nearly 14% at Rs 42.75 in otherwise weak market on back of heavy volumes on BSE. In a BSE filing today, the company said that MRPL, a listed Central Public Sector Enterprise (CPSE) under Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas has been upgraded from schedule 'B' status to schedule 'A' status by Department of Public Enterprises, Government of India with effect from July 04, 2013.

In the broader market, the BSE Mid-cap and Small-cap indices were down 0.5% each.

The market breadth in BSE continued to remain weak with 1,103 shares declining and 779 shares advancing.