Weak market breadth

The market extended early losses in morning trade amid broad based selling pressure. At 10:25 IST, the barometer index, the S&P BSE Sensex, was down 166.52 points or 0.47% at 35,642.43. The Nifty 50 index was down 47.10 points or 0.44% at 10,677.30.

Among secondary barometers, the BSE Mid-Cap index was down 0.45%. The BSE Small-Cap index was down 0.39%.

The market breadth, indicating the overall health of the market, was weak. On BSE, 697 shares rose and 1201 shares fell. A total of 93 shares were unchanged.

IT shares declined. Oracle Financial Services Software (down 2.27%), TCS (down 1.81%), MindTree (down 1.79%), HCL Technologies (down 1.55%), MphasiS (down 1.3%), Hexaware Technologies (down 1.29%), Wipro (down 1.05%), Persistent Systems (down 0.78%) and Infosys (down 0.6%), edged lower.

Tech Mahindra was up 1.04% after the company scheduled a board meeting on 21 February 2019 to consider a proposal to buy-back equity shares of the company. The announcement was made on Saturday, 16 February 2019.

Pharmaceutical shares were mixed. IPCA Laboratories (up 1.94%), Alkem Laboratories (up 1.49%), Glenmark Pharmaceuticals (up 0.34%), Piramal Enterprises (up 0.20%) and Aurobindo Pharma (up 0.13%), edged higher. Strides Shasun (down 0.16%), Sun Pharmaceutical Industries (down 0.26%), Wockhardt (down 0.29%), Cipla (down 0.75%), Cadila Healthcare (down 1.24%), Lupin (down 1.28%), GlaxoSmithKline Pharmaceuticals (down 1.8%) and Divi's Laboratories (down 3.37%), edged lower.

Dr Reddy's Laboratories 2.66%. The company said that the company received a written communication from the US FDA, about the issuance of Establishment Inspection Report (EIR) for FTO VII, its formulations manufacturing facility at Duvvada, Visakhapatnam. This site was included in the warning letter received from US FDA in November, 2015. Subsequently, the site was audited by US FDA in March 2017 for which the company received EIR in November 2017, wherein the site's status remained unchanged. The site was again audited in October 2018. Based on the company's responses and follow up actions, the US FDA has concluded that this inspection is "closed" and has determined the inspection classification of this facility as Voluntary Action Initiated (VAi). The announcement was made on Saturday, 16 February 2019.

Overseas, Asian shares edged higher on Monday, with trade talks between the US and China set to continue in Washington this week after high-level meetings in Beijing concluded on Friday.

US stock indices surged on Friday, 15 February 2019, buoyed by growing optimism that the US and China can strike a trade truce ahead of the March 1 deadline. US stock market will be closed on Monday in observance of the Presidents Day holiday.

In political news, tensions rose in Washington D.C. when President Donald Trump declared a national emergency citing a humanitarian crisis at the Southern Border. In economic news, the Empire State manufacturing index rose 4.9 points in February to 8.8 and industrial production fell 0.6% in January, the first decline in eight months.

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