Stocks tumble due to weak global trends, Dr Reddy's down by 1.9 pc

Equity benchmark indices tumbled into the negative terrain during early hours on Friday following weak global cues as investors feared that passage of the Hong Kong pro-democracy bill in Washington could derail trade talks between the United States and China.

At 10:15 am, the BSE S & P Sensex was down by 243 points to 40,888 while the Nifty 50 rolled down by 57 points at 12,094. Sectoral indices at the National Stock Exchange were mixed with Nifty auto, financial services, FMCG and IT in the red.

Among stocks, the prominent losers were Dr Reddy's, ICICI Bank, Hindustan Lever, HDFC and Mahindra & Mahindra.

However, Bharti Infratel continued to climb up and added gains of 5.6 per cent at Rs 271.05 per share while Bharti Airtel was up by 1.8 per cent. Yes Bank gained by 4.3 per cent, Zee Entertainment by 2 per cent and GAIL by 1.7 per cent.

Meanwhile, Asian markets slipped as investors turned cautious, fearing a new US law backing Hong Kong protesters could put hurdles in efforts to end the US-China trade conflict.

MSCI's broadest index of Asia Pacific shares outside Japan fell by 0.9 per cent. Hong Kong led the losses, dropping by 2 per cent while South Korean shares lost by 1.2 per cent and Japan's Nikkei eased by 0.1 per cent.

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