Sensex, Nifty Off Day's Low; HDFC Bank Falls As Asset Quality Deteriorates In June Quarter

The S&P BSE Sensex and NSE Nifty 50 Indexes (stock markets) extended declines to third day in opening trades led by declines in HDFC Bank after its asset quality deteriorated in June quarter. Losses in HDFC, ITC, Bajaj Finance, ICICI Bank, Axis Bank and Infosys also weighed on the benchmarks. The S&P BSE Sensex which fell as much as 348 points to break 38,000 mark and the NSE Nifty 50 Index which fell below its important psychological level of 11,350, came off intraday low levels owing to buying interest in Axis Bank, Reliance Industries, Infosys and TCS.

As of 10:29 am, the BSE Sensex traded 0.59 per cent or 225 points lower at 38,112 and the NSE Nifty 50 Index dropped 0.44 per cent or 50 points to 11,370.

"Nifty is likely to stage a recovery from lower levels and bottom should be made around current levels," AK Prabahakar, head of research at IDBI Capital told NDTV over phone.

Five of 11 sector gauges compiled by National Stock Exchange were trading lower. Led by the Nifty Financial Services Index's 1.8 per cent decline. Nifty Private Bank and Nifty Bank Indexes also dropped over a per cent each.

On the other hand, Nifty Pharma and Nifty Media Indexes was top gainers, up over 1 per cent each.

Mid- and small-cap shares were witnessing intense selling pressure as the Nifty Midcap 100 Index declined 1.47 per cent and Nifty Smallcap 100 Index dropped 1.87 per cent.

HDFC Bank was the biggest drag on the Sensex and Nifty. HDFC Bank shares fell as much as 2.75 per cent to hit intraday low of Rs 2,310.55 after the bank's gross non-performing assets as a percentage of total advances rose to 1.4 per cent fro, 1.36 per cent in the previous quarter, the bank said in an exchange filing on Saturday.

Bajaj Finserv, Bajaj Finance, Bharat Petroleum, IndusInd Bank, Kotak Mahindra Bank, Eicher Motors, Coal India, Adani Ports and IltraTech Cement were also among the losers in the Nifty.

On the flipside, Vedanta, Tata Motors, Bharti Infratel, Yes Bank, Sun Pharma and Maruti Suzuki were among the notable gainers.

Among the individual shares, Reliance Industries swung between gains and losses after its profit, which came in at Rs 10,104 crore, surpassed Reuters' estimates but its gross refining margins (GRM), a measure of how much the company has earned by refining a barrel of crude oil, slipped to $8.1 per barrel from $8.2 per barrel in the previous quarter.

The overall market breadth was extremely negative as 1,227 shares were declining while 320 were advancing on the BSE.