Markets Trading With Negative Bias

As expected in our morning update, the Indian markets opened in the negative territory today. At present, both the indices are trading in the red zone, with the Sensex down 175 points to 17310 while Nifty is down 55 points to 5268. All the sectoral indices are trading in the red zone, except Healthcare, which is marginally in the green. Capital Goods and Metals are the leading indices witnessing a downside, trading down more than 2%. Others like Bankex, Power, Oil & Gas etc. are also trading lower down more than 1%.

Other Asian markets are also trading weak after the disappointing US job creation data, which further raises concerns about the recovery of the world’s largest economy. Nikkei and Hang Seng are down by almost 1% while Shanghai is trading lower by 0.23%.

Back home, Hindalco is the leading index loser, down 3.68% to Rs 128.20. Others in the Metals pack too are trading down more than 2%, including Jindal Steel, Sterlite Industries and Tata Steel. Capital Goods heavyweights, BHEL and L&T, are trading lower by 2.74% and 2.48% respectively. Auto majors are also on the losing street, with Mahindra & Mahindra, Tata Motors, Hero MotoCorp etc. trading in negative territory. Other stocks like Wipro, Cipla, Sun Pharma, ONGC, etc. are trading marginally in the red zone. There are very few stocks like in the gainers list at the moment. TCS, HUL, Tata Power, Bajaj Auto and Bharti Airtel are the stocks trading marginally in the green zone.

Alok Industries is down 1.23% to Rs 20.10 after the news that it re-issued foreign currency convertible bonds which were due in 2012.

The market breadth, which indicates the overall health of the market, is weak. On the BSE, 1095 shares declined and 904 shares rose. 71 shares remained unchanged.

We expect the markets to remain volatile for the day, with a negative bias.