Trades Slip Into Red

The Indian markets are currently trading trading lower despite the green signal given to FDI in multi-brand retail by the Lok Sabha post market hours yesterday. While there were 218 votes against FDI, the government managed to garner 253 votes in favour of this move.

Further, Credit Suisse has lowered India's economic growth forecast marginally from 6% to 5.9% for the fiscal year ending March 2013. The investment bank also reduced its growth forecast for FY14 to 6.9% from the earlier 7.2%.

In the peer Asian markets, Nikkei is up 0.63% while the Hang Seng and Shanghai have dipped 0.12% and 0.46% respectively. According to Bloomberg reports, the Asian stocks rose, with the regional benchmark index headed for its highest close in eight months, after data on US services and factory orders beat estimates.

Back home, IT and Teck are the worst performing sectoral indices, down 1.66% and 1.42% respectively. Others like Power, Bankex and Capital Goods are trading lower in the negatives. Consumer Durables is the only index trading higher, up by 0.78%.

Bharti Airtel is the worst performer at this hour of trade, down 2.33% at Rs 322.35 per share. The IT pack continues to move southwards, with Infosys down 2.09% and TCS down 2%. Other Index heavyweights like HUL, ICICI Bank, SBI, HDFC Bank and RIL are among the stocks which have dropped between 0.82%-1.62%. Coal India, Maruti Suzuki and Dr Reddy's Labs are also marginally in the green zone.

As of now, only three index stocks are trading in positives. Bajaj Auto is up 1.12% to Rs 1948.45 per share, Tata Motors by 0.29% and HDFC by 0.16%.

The market breadth, which indicates the overall health of the market, is weak as of now. On the BSE, 1010 shares have advanced, 1285 shares have declined and 112 shares are unchanged.