Markets languish ahead of expiry

Banks, IT, metal trade weak

Markets continued to trade on a soft note this morning on sustained weakness in metal, banking and IT shares. The Sensex is down 46 points at 19,958. Nifty is down five points at 6,051.

Risk appetite was also frail after the Reserve Bank of India in its third-quarter monetary policy review made further rate cuts conditional on government moves to control fiscal deficit. Markets today are likley to be volatile as investors roll over position from the January series to February series. Banking majors such as ICICI Bank, Punjab National Bank's results will also decide market direction.

Asian shares paused amid concerns over US growth recovery after world's biggest economy experienced the first quarter of negative GDP growth (-0.1% quarter-on-quarter at an annualized rate) since the Great Recession. 

Meanwhile,  US Federal Reserve did not announce any policy change on Wednesday . It did change its assessment of the economy and acknowledged that “economic activity paused in recent months", but added that it was “in large part because of weather-related disruptions and other transitory factors".

Broader markets held on to some gains. BSE mid-cap index was up 0.14% at 6,943. However, the small-cap index remained unchanged at 7,082.

BSE realty index has gained 0.7% at 2,224. Consumer durables and PSU indices are up marginally as well. ON the losing side, BSE meetal index has slumped 0.5% at 10559. Bankex, IT and oil & gas indices were also down 0.1-0.2% each.

BHEL has gained 2% at Rs 227. Bajaj Auto and ONGC added 1.5% each, followed by ITC and Maruti Suzuki. On the other hand, Reliance has slipped 1.3% at Rs 887. RIL today said the company bought back 8.2 lakh shares at average price of Rs 700.226 per share on Monday.

Tata Motors is down 1% at Rs 296. HUL, Tata POwer and Sterlite are down in trades as well.

PSU OMCs extended Wednesday's gain on fresh buying. Oil India reversed fall after the company said that Government of India will sell 6.01 crore shares constituting 10% of the total paid up capital of the company via Offer for Sale through the stock exchanges mechanism.