Nifty holds 5200 amid pressure; RIL, TCS, Bharti down 1%

The BSE Sensex stayed lower by more than 100 points due to fall in banks, oil & gas, metals, banks, capital goods and FMCG stocks. Infosys was quite volatile ahead of its earnings that schedule to be announced on Friday while its rivals TCS and Wipro fell 0.5-1%. Suresh Mahadevan of UBS Securities is neutral on largecap IT stocks namely Infosys and Tata Consultancy Services.

Mahadevan feels currency depreciation and improved US economy may help these companies, but he is not too positive on fourth quarter earnings. He believes that company may start picking up growth in the next quarter onwards.

The BSE benchmark was down 0.76% or 130.32 points to 17,113.52. Meanwhile, the NSE benchmark fell 40 points to 5,203.40, which managed to hold the 5200 level.

Metals stocks were under pressure after sharp fall in LME copper yesterday. Copper futures on London Metal Exchange dropped close to 4% yesterday, which gained 0.5% today. Shanghai copper too fell to three-month lows, losing over 2% today due to likely slowdown in demand from China. Shares of Jindal Steel, Tata Steel, Sterlite Industries, Sesa Goa and SAIL plummeted 1-3%.

India's most valued stock Reliance Industries slipped over 1.3% while state-owned oil & gas producer ONGC was down 0.7%.

Country's largest lender State Bank of India dropped over 1% while rivals ICICI Bank and HDFC Bank too declined over 1%.

Defensive stocks: FMCG major HUL and cigarette major ITC declined nearly 1% on profit booking after seeing sharp rally yesterday.

Capital goods majors Bharat Heavy Electricals and Larsen & Toubro went down 1% each.

However, Tata Motors, top commercial vehicle maker and M&M, utility vehicle manufacturer outperformed other largecaps, rising over 0.5%. Drug maker Cipla too gained 0.5%.

The market breadth was moderately lower; about 800 shares advanced while 1038 shares declined on the BSE.