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Markets have continued to trade in the red this morning, albeit off the day's low. The Sensex is down 13 points at 18,706. Nifty is down 10 points at 5,646.
Global risk appetite was hampered after Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke hinted towards tapering off the bond-buying programme popularly known as ‘quantitative easing’ sooner-than-expected once US economy shows sustainable signs of recovery.
Foreign institutional investors have been sellers in index futures for the past 14 out of 15 sessions, totalling Rs 99.17 billion.
Globally, Asian stocks traded lower amid looming uncertainty over the Federal Reserve’s bond-buying plans.
Investors were cautious as the rising rupee may force the Reserve Bank of India to defer reduction in key policy rate going forward. Rate sensitive stocks dipped in morning trades today. BSE bankex is down 0.5% at 12,948.
BSE consumer durables index shed 0.5% at 6,514. FMCG and healthcare indices have also shown some weakness and are down half a per cent each.
Meanwhile, the oil & gas index has added 0.8%, outperformed only by the IT index which is up 1.3% in trades.
Jindal Steel has dipped 2.5% at Rs 216. Sun Pharma has dipped 1.7%, followed by Hindalco, HDFC and ICICI Bank. Among other losers are ITC, M&M and Wipro.
On the other hand, Infosys has added 1.8% at Rs 2,409. Hero MotoCorp,TCS and BHEL are up over a per cent each.
Meanwhile, Future Retail has crashed 13% to Rs 127 after the stock turned ex-scheme of arrangement today.
