Sensex drops 237 points on profit booking, Nifty below 11,600

Equity benchmark indices erased opening gains in early hours on Friday due to profit booking with the Nifty auto dropping 1.3 per cent.

At 10:15 am, the BSE S & P Sensex was down 238 points at 38,660 while the Nifty 50 slipped 69 points to 11,528. At the National Stock Exchange, all sectoral indices were in the red.

Among stocks, Yes Bank continued its downward slide and dipped 2 per cent lower at Rs 84.05 per share. In the auto sector, Mahindra & Mahindra and Hero MotoCorp between 1.3 per cent and 1.9 per cent respectively.

The other prominent losers were Maruti, GAIL, Indian Oil, ONGC, Bajaj Finance and Bajaj Finserv.

However, UltraTech Cement gained 1.7 per cent to Rs 4,680 per share. Titan, Powergrid, Vedanta and Tata Steel showed marginal gains.

Meanwhile, Asian stocks advanced after a top Federal Reserve official cemented expectations of a US interest rate cut later this month.

The Shanghai Composite Index and Hong Kong's Hang Seng were both up 1 per cent. South Korea's KOSPI also rose 1 per cent and Japan's Nikkei advanced 1.65 per cent.