Sensex, Nifty slip in opening trade; Astrazeneca Pharma, Ramco Cements & RVNL down up to 12%

Indian equity benchmarks traded lower in Friday's early trade, dragged by financial stocks. The 30-share BSE Sensex fell 108 points or 0.15 per cent to trade at 71,321 and the NSE Nifty was down 38 points or 0.17 per cent to trade at 21,680. Broader markets (mid- and small-cap shares) were also weak as Nifty Midcap 100 slipped 0.36 per cent and small-cap shed 0.05 per cent.

BSE 500 stocks such as Astrazeneca Pharma, Ramco Cements, RVNL, PFC, Torrent Power, Escorts Kubota, Ratnamani, MMTC, Paytm and Apollo Tyres cracked up to 12.31 per cent. In contrast, JK Lakshmi Cement, LIC, Zomato, Birla Corp, NIACL, Medplus Health and YES Bank jumped up to 6.90 per cent.

On the global front, Asian markets opened lower today. Overnight, Wall Street equities closed higher.

Back home, foreign institutional investors (FIIs) offloaded Rs 4,933.78 crore worth of shares on a net basis during the previous session, while domestic institutional investors (DIIs) bought Rs 5,512.32 crore worth of shares, exchange data showed.

10 out of the 15 sector gauges -- compiled by the NSE -- were trading in the red. Sub-indexes Nifty Financial Services and Nifty Metal were underperforming the NSE platform by falling as much as 0.55 per cent and 0.37 per cent, respectively. Although, an uptick in Nifty PSU Bank and Nifty Healthcare capped some losses.

On the stock-specific front, Bharti Airtel was the top loser in the Nifty pack as the stock cracked 1.49 per cent to trade at Rs 1,125.15. M&M, SBI Life, Amruti and HDFC Life fell up to 1.18 per cent.

In contrast, Britannia, Tata Consumer Products, Reliance Industries, Cipla and PowerGrid were among the top gainers.

The overall market breadth was strong as 1,506 shares were declining while 1,198 were advancing on BSE.

On the 30-share BSE index, frontline stocks such as Infosys, Airtel, HDFC Bank, ITC and M&M were among the top laggards.

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