Sensex washes out initial gains, slips 131 pts in late morning

The benchmark BSE Sensex reversed early gains and was quoted lower by 131 points to 25,358.71 in the late morning session on selling in banking, auto, telecom and financial stocks on forecast of a delay in monsoon.
The Sensex resumed up at 25,528.80 and moved up further to a high of 25,606.92 on initial heavy buying on the back of good foreign capital inflows.
However, it dropped immediately to 25,358.71 at 1100 hrs, showing a loss of 130.86 points or 0.51 per cent.
The NSE 50-share Nifty also dropped 37.15 points or 0.48 per cent to 7,777.75 at 1100 hrs.

Major losers were SBI (5.08 pc), ICICI Bank (3.31 pc), Bharti Airtel (2.56 pc), Bajaj Auto (2.10 pc) and ONGC (1.89 pc).
However, Dr Reddy's rose 3.33 per cent followed by Asian Paints 1.11 per cent, Lupin 0.67 per cent and Infosys 0.65 per cent.

Overseas, Asian stocks logged gains, shrugging off soft Chinese data released over the weekend. China's investment, factory output and retail sales all grew more slowly than expected in April, adding to doubts about whether the world's second-largest economy is stabilizing.
Meanwhile, the India Meteorological Department (IMD) yesterday said the monsoon onset over Kerala this year is likely to be slightly delayed.

Foreign investors sold shares worth Rs 1,493.88 crore on Friday as per the provisional data.