Benchmark indices remained under selling pressure dragged by realty, metal, financial services, FMCG and auto stocks.

Benchmark indices made a partial recovery in afternoon trade after hitting intraday lows in afternoon trade.

At 2:07 PM, the BSE Sensex was trading at 33,709, down 148 points, while the Nifty50 index was trading at 10,368, down 59 points.

Metal Index has fallen the most on NSE with Jindal Stainless Hisar (-2%), Welcorp (-1.8%) and MOIL (-1.7%) pulling it down by 0.8%. Realty sector slipped 0.7% with Phoenix (-3.7%), Oberoi Realty (-2.5%) and Unitech (-2.5%) being the major losers. PSU Banking sector has gained almost 1% in today’s trading session. All PSU Banks are in the green except PNB which is trading at 97.50 (-0.5%). IT Index is up by 0.16%.

On BSE Sensex, Idea and PNB are trading at massive volumes of 5.8 million and 4.1 million respectively. In terms of the number of trades, PNB tops the list with 16,000 trades followed by SBI with 5,700 trades.

HDFC and Reliance contributed the most to the fall in BSE Sensex as they lowered it by 35 points and 29 points respectively. ICICI Bank and Kotak Bank also knocked it off by 14 points each out of the total fall of 165 points.

BSE MidCap Index is flat with major gainers being Vakrangee hitting the upper circuit and Natco Pharma (+4%). Natco Pharma shares have gained on high volume as it saw a recent bid at 743.70 and 28,708 shares have traded hands in today’s session already. BSE SmallCap Index slipped marginally by 0.17% with major gainers being GTL (+17%), JBF Industries (+16%) and GTL Infrastructure (+10%) and losers include TNPL (-6.1%) and Dia Power (-5.5%).

BHEL stock slipped 1%. The company has successfully commissioned a 600 MW coal-based thermal power plant in the state of Andhra Pradesh.

On the economy front, February WPI Inflation at 2.48% vs 2.84% mom. Manufacturing product inflation at 3.04% and vegetable inflation at 15.26%.

Shares of Fortis Healthcare zoomed 4% as Yes Bank acquired stake in the company.

Volatility index India VIX gained 1.08% and is at 14.6200.

Tech Mahindra (+2%), Yes Bank (+1.8%), Ambuja Cement (+1.4%), Ultratech Cement (+1%) and HCL Tech (0.7%) were top gainers on Nifty50.

IOC (-2.8%), Bharti Infratel (-2.6%), Hindustan Petroleum (-2%), Hero Motocorp (-1.8%) and HDFC (-1.5%) were the top losers in today’s trade.

Out of 2,018 stocks traded on Nifty, 755 advanced, 926 declined and 337 remained unchanged.

A total of 12 stocks registered a fresh 52-week high in trade today, while 54 stocks touched a new 52-week low on the NSE.

Source: indiainfoline.com