Mumbai: Equity benchmark indices were in the negative zone during early hours on Monday despite Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman last week announcing a slew of measures to spur the economy, including roll-back of an increase in surcharge on the income tax outgo of foreign investors.
At 10:15 am, the BSE S&P Sensex was down by 77 points at 36,624 while the Nifty 50 edged lower by 41 points to 10,789.
The optimism over Sitharaman’s bid to boost auto and infrastructure sectors was tempered with caution amid renewed trade war escalation between the United States and China along with fresh forecasts of a slowdown in global economic growth.
At the National Stock Exchange, all sectoral indices were in the red except for Nifty PSU bank which gained by 1.1 percent. The nifty metal dropped by 4 percent down while auto was down 1.3 percent, IT by 1.1 percent and pharma by 0.9 percent.
Among stocks, Indiabulls Housing Finance gained by 3.9 percent, State Bank of India by 2.8 percent, HDFC by 2.3 percent, Zee Entertainment by 2.1 percent and Bajaj Finserv by 1.9 percent.
However, mining major Vedanta dropped by 4.6 percent, Tata Steel by 4 percent, Hindalco by 3.5 percent and JSW Steel by 2.9 percent. Pharma firm Cipla slipped by 1.8 percent.
Meanwhile, Asian shares sank as US President Donald Trump on Friday imposed an additional 5 percent duty on 550 billion dollars of Chinese goods in the latest trade war escalation by the world’s two largest economies.
MSCI’s broadest index of Asia Pacific shares outside Japan still shed 2 percent while Japan’s Nikkei lost 2.3 percent. Shanghai blue chips fell by 1.2 percent as China’s yuan slumped to a fresh 11-year low against the dollar.