Sensex, Nifty extend losses; 90 stocks touch fresh 52-week low levels

Domestic indices extended losses and continued to trade in the red in the afternoon trade on Thursday with BSE Sensex trading at 31,660.93, down 136.91 points or 0.43 per cent at around 12.45 pm.

Nifty50 slipped below the 9,900 mark and was trading at 9,866.95, down 41 points or 0.41 per cent.

Nearly 90 stocks including, Adlabs Entertainment, Dwarikesh Sugar Industries, Eris Lifesciences, Lupin, Piramal Phytocare and Sun Pharmaceutical Industries hit their fresh 52-week low on NSE.

Barring Nifty FMCG and Nifty Realty, all other sectoral indices on the NSE were trading in red with Nifty PSU Bank losing the most, down 1.02 per cent.

09.20: Sensex sheds over 100 pts; Nifty below 9,900; Tata Motors, ONGC top losers
Benchmark indices opened on a weak note on Thursday amid weak signals from other Asian markets. Flaring tensions between North Korea and US over former’s nuke tests weighed on the sentiment.

At 9.20 am, the BSE Sensex was trading 155 points, or 0.49 per cent, lower at 31,642.86.

Index heavyweights Tata Motors, ICICI Bank and Larsen & Toubro led the fall.

Nifty50 was trading 48 points, or 0.48 per cent, lower at 9,860.05.

Among Sensex stocks, Tata Motors plunged 5.19 per cent to Rs 395.10. Brokerage Motilal Oswal Securities noted that JLR's Ebitda margins plunged 460bps YoY to 7.9 per cent in June quarter, impacted by higher raw material cost, marketing cost & operating deleverage.

“We downgrade our consolidated EPS estimate for the company by 27 per cent/7 per cent for FY18/19, but maintain ‘Buy’ on the stock,” the brokerage said.

Bajaj Auto, Power Grid, ONGC and Larsen & Toubro declined up to 1.1 per cent.

On the flip side, Dr Reddy’s Labs, Sun Pharma, Lupin and Cipla rose 1.34 per cent, 1.21 epr cent, 0.57 epr cent and 0.55 per cent, respectively.

Meanwhile, BHEL, GAIL, Bharat Forge, IOB, Adani Power, Union Bank Coffee Day Enterprises, GSPL and Gujarat Gas are some of the companies, which will report their quarterly results later in the day. Others included MOIL, Paga Industries, PFC and Petronet LNG.