Key equity indices trade in red during afternoon session

The key equity indices on Friday traded in the negative territory during the afternoon trade on weak global cues.

Heavy selling pressure was seen in the banking, metal and capital goods stocks. However, healthy buying in IT and Teck (technology, media and entertainment) stocks restricted further decline so far.

At 2.05 p.m., the wider Nifty50 of the National Stock Exchange (NSE) traded at 10,544.55 points, down 20.75 points or 0.20 per cent from the previous close.

The barometer 30-scrip Sensitive Index (Sensex) of the BSE, which opened at 34,434.14 points, traded at 34,375.78 points (2.05 p.m.) -- down 51.51 points or 0.15 per cent -- from its previous close.

So far, Sensex has touched a high of 34,453.71 points and a low of 34,311.29 points during the day.

The BSE market breadth so far was bearish with 1,505 declines and 994 advances.

On Thursday, expectations of healthy quarterly earnings coupled with a rebound in commodity prices and broadly positive global indices pushed the Indian equity market to close at its highest level in the last seven weeks.

The Nifty50 closed higher by 39.10 points, or 0.37 per cent, at 10,565.30 points on Thursday and the Sensex closed at 34,427.29 points -- up 95.61 points, or 0.28 per cent.

In another market development on Friday shares of IT major Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) sold over 6 per cent on the back of its healthy quarterly results announced post market hours on Thursday.

The IT major's net profit for Q4 was reported at Rs 6,925 crore, which was up 4.6 per cent from Rs 6,622 crore in the same period year ago and up 5.8 per cent sequentially from Rs 6,545 crore a quarter ago.

At 2.05 p.m. its market-cap stood at Rs 6,51,403.35 crore and its share price was at Rs 3,403.40 per share, up 6.67 percent from the previous close.

On Friday, the major gainers on the BSE were TCS, Infosys, Wipro, Tata Motors and ITC so far while Yes Bank, State Bank of India and Tata Steel, ICICI Bank and Reliance Industries were among the major losers.

On NSE, the top gainers were Tata Consultancy Services, HCL and Infosys. The major losers were Yes Bank, Bajaj Finance and GAIL.

--IANS

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