The market continued to trade mildly lower amid consolidation, following weak global cues.

The Nifty is trading below 10,600 levels while IT is the biggest loser among sectoral indices, falling over 1 percent.

Bharti Airtel is up nearly 5 percent after reporting profit in the March quarter against expectations of loss and announcement of merger between Bharti Infratel and Indus Towers.

The 30-share BSE Sensex was down 61.71 points at 34,554.93 and the 50-share NSE Nifty fell 24.80 points to 10,589.60. About 1,188 shares declined against 825 advancing shares on the BSE.

Wipro, Agro Tech Foods, Bajaj Corp, Future Supply, Gujarat Heavy Chemicals, ICICI Lombard, Indiabulls Real Estate, Jindal Stainless, KSB Pumps, M&M Financial, Meera Industries, Miven Machine, Reliance Nippon, Sterlite Tech, Syngene International, UltraTech Cement and Wendt will announce March quarter earnings today.

10:20 am Merger: Bharti Airtel, Idea Cellular and Vodafone Group today announced an agreement for merger of Indus Towers and Bharti Infratel to create the largest mobile tower operator in the world outside China with over 163,000 towers across 22 telecom service areas.

“The combined company, which will fully own the respective businesses of Bharti Infratel and Indus Towers, will change its name to Indus Towers Limited and will continue to be listed on Indian Stock Exchanges,” Bharti Group said in a statement announcing the joint deal.

The combined company will own 100 percent of Indus Towers. Indus Towers is currently jointly owned by Bharti Infratel (42 percent holding), Vodafone (42 percent), Idea Group (11.15 percent) and Providence (4.85 percent).

Post the deal, Bharti Airtel and Vodafone will jointly control the combined company, and the transaction is expected to close before the end of 2018-19, subject to statutory approvals.

10:10 am Technical Outlook: Shitij Gandhi of SMC Global Securities said as we are heading towards April expiry with two trading session left, the short sellers seem to be on back foot as they still holding outstanding short positions.

On every dip, we have been continuously seeing short covering in the Nifty as Call Writers are covering their positions which in turn supporting upside movement in prices.

In the recent weeks, we have observed that put writers are continuously shifting towards the higher band which signifies limited downside in the market ahead of expiry.

Furthermore, we also anticipate that more short covering can be seen in coming sessions which can lead Nifty towards 10,700 on the day of expiry.

The initial rollover data also indicates long rollover to May series. On the technical front, 10,580 spot level should act as support while 10,750 will be the immediate hurdle.

source: moneycontrol.com