Sensex flat, rupee weak, IT stocks biggest gainers

Indian markets opened flat this morning while the Indian currency opened weak.

Sensex was up30 points at 21009, Nifty was up 9 points at 6264.

IT stocks like TCS, Infosys and Wipro gained post Cognizant’s stellar results.

The company reported Q3 revenues at USD 2.31 billion, a growth of 6.7 percent sequentially and 21.9 percent compared to the same quarter last year.

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Bajaj Auto, HUL, Sun Pharma, HDFC and Bhel are the losers.

“After blasting to new highs, the indices are struggling a bit and looking at levels to settle comfortably before hopefully another take-off,” said IIFL in a note.

BHEL, Ashok Leyland and Sobha Developers results will be in focus.

The global cues are also subdued.

The US Institute for Supply Management said its services index rose a point to 55.4 in October despite a partial government shutdown during the first half of the month. This brought knee-jerk comments and reactions that the Federal Reserve could start slowing its asset buying as early as next month; broad expectations were that the tapering could happen around March-April 2014.

Even the Indian rupee opened38 paise lower at 61.99 per dollar as against previous day’s closing 61.61 per dollar.

The US dollar maintained a bid tone early in Asian trade after upbeat US economic data kept alive some expectations that Federal Reserve might scale back stimulus as soon as next month.

According to NS Venkatesh of IDBI Bank , currency markets will take cues from stock market movements. “Although we are witnessing some dollar inflows from exporters and custodian banks, rupee will see a weakening bias. Earlier than expected close of the RBI swap window could have an impact on dollar rupee movement in the medium term,” he adds. “The range for the day is seen between 61.50-61.90/USD,” Venkatesh said in an interview with CNBC-TV18.