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Indian markets were down on Friday following weak performance by Asian markets and a downgrade of Indian equities by UBS.
The BSE Sensex was down 129 points at 17,373 and the NSE Nifty was down 41 points at 5,290.
Except the Chinese and Hong Kong markets, most of the Asian markets were down. This was attributed to the fall in the US markets on Thursday due to the lower-than-expected US economic data.
The markets opened marginally down and continued to move in a range through the first half of the day’s trading session.
“Investors took profits ahead of the Reliance Industries’ results and they didn’t want to carry forward their position over a week-end. During the day, UBS downgraded Indian shares to neutral from overweight saying that India is unlikely to see a drastic fall in inflation and so there won’t be aggressive rate cuts in near future,” said Mr. Alex K Mathews, Head Technical and Derivatives Research, Geojit BNP Paribas Financial Services.
He also added that the UBS report considered China to be a safer bet than India given the chance of policy easing and a more stable economy. This further added to the negative sentiments in the market during the second half of the session.
There was selling pressure on the capital goods, power, realty, oil and banking sector stocks. FMCG and auto sectors saw buying action with both the indices on the BSE up around 0.1 per cent each.
The top five Sensex stocks were Mahindra& Mahindra, Wipro, Tata Steel, Cipla and ITC.
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