Heavyweights drag markets lower; Sensex down 70 points

Heavyweights drag markets lower; Sensex down 70 points

Markets edged lower in morning trades as selling in index heavyweights like ICICI Bank, Reliance Industries and L&T weighed on the indices. At 1040 hrs, the Sensex was down 70 points at 27,137 and the Nifty was down 22 points to trade at 8,124.

The broader markets too gave up all of its early gains and were in red with the midcap index down 0.2% and the smallcap index down 0.04%.

IT index gained 0.8% on defensive buying and Power index up 0.2% were the only sectoral pockets in green.

The ones leading the laggards list were Realty, Oil & Gas and Metal indices down 1-1.5%.

Auto names like Bajaj Auto, Hero MotoCorp and Maruti Suzuki gained nearly a percent each and were the top Sensex gainers.

IT majors held on to their early gains and were up 0.4-1%.

BHEL, HUL, NTPC and SBI were some of the other gainers.

Metal names like Hindalco, Tata Steel which slipped upto 2% were among the top losers of the hour.

M&M lost ground by 1.3% after Credit Suisse downgraded the stock to "neutral" from "outperform" saying the company's valuations are no longer "attractive".

Bharti Airtel, L&T, ICICI Bank, ONGC and Coal India were some of the major laggards.

Sharda Corpchem which listed today on the NSE was trading at Rs 251, a 61% premium against its issue price of Rs 156 per share. The Rs 350-crore initial public offering (IPO) of agrochemical company Sharda Cropchem was subscribed around 60 times.

The market breadth turned negative on BSE. 1248 stocks declined while 1120 stocks advanced.