Sensex sheds over 100 points on profit-taking, mixed Asia

The six-day stock market rally took a breather in early trade Thursday, as a mixed Asia provided investors back home the reason to book profit with benchmark Sensex slipping below the 27,000-mark and dropping over 100 points.

While banking stocks led the the broad-market decline, weakness in oil & gas and metals stocks also contributed to the slide, dragging the Sensex to a low of 26,926.01, down 110 points.

The fall comes on the back of a robust upsurge in the previous six sessions that resulted in the Sensex surging more than 1,400 points backed by healthy global markets sentiment and the central bank’s more-than-estimated policy rate-cut surprise.

At 10.10 am, the 30-share BSE S&P Sensex was at 26,939.23, down 96.62 points, or 0.4 percent from previous close. The broader 50-stock CNX Nifty was at 8,155.80, down 21.60 points, or 0.3 percent.

Despite the fall, market breadth was almost evenly poised with 882 stock declining against 881 advances on BSE.

Among other Asian market peers, China’s Hang Seng faltered 0.7% while Shanghai Composite surged 3.8 percent even as Japan’s Nikkei declined 0.7 percent in early trade.

Sensex laggards such as ITC dropped nearly 2 percent to Rs 340, Bharti Airtel lost 1.7 percent to Rs 337.60, ICICI Bank eased 1.3 percent to Rs 279.20, Lupin fell 1.1 percent to Rs 2,044.75 and L&T was down 0.8 percent to Rs 1,531.25.

Shares of HDFC Bank, M&M, Reliance Industries, Axis Bank and SBI were down around a percent each.