Mumbai: Equity benchmark indices touched a five-month low during early hours on Friday amid sagging investor sentiment.
At 10:15 am, the BSE S&P Sensex was down by 68 points at 36,405 while the Nifty 50 edged lower by 20 points to 10,721.
At the National Stock Exchange, sectoral indices were mixed with Nifty private banks down by 1.2 percent and financial services by 0.9 percent.
Among stocks, IndusInd Bank was down by 2.3 percent, ICICI Bank by 2 percent, Kotak Mahindra Bank by 1.4 percent and HFDC Bank by 1.1 percent. However, Yes Bank reversed its downward slide and moved up 7.2 percent to Rs 60.40 per share.
The other prominent losers were pharma major Cipla, FMCG firm ITC, auto leaders Maruti and Eicher Motors, Bharti Infratel and Hindalco.
But UPL, Vedanta, Indiabulls Housing Finance and Coal India showed gains of over 2 percent. Tata Motors, Tata Consultancy Services, Hero MotoCorp, and HCL Tech too were in the positive zone.
Meanwhile, Asian shares struggled to make headway as uncertainty continued over how much the US Federal Reserve will cut interest rates.
MSCI’s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan was 0.1 percent higher. Japan’s benchmark Nikkei added 0.3 percent while Shanghai Composite Hong Kong’s Hang Seng gained 0.5 percent each.