Nifty, Sensex pare losses; Rupee moves towards 57/$

Indian equity benchmarks pared half of their losses due to buying interest in heavyweights at lower levels. The Indian rupee has fallen quite sharply since yesterday that was down 49 paise to 56.79 as against the US dollar.

The BSE benchmark fell 94.78 points to 16,937.78 and the NSE benchmark slipped 31 points to 5,134. Asian markets remained lower in the range of 0.5-2%, but Nikkei showed smart recovery to trade flat.

Cement stocks too huge knock today after the Competition Commission of India slammed with more than Rs 6,000 crore fine on 11 cement companies. ACC, Ambuja Cements, Jaiprakash Associates, Grasim, Ultratech Cement, Madras Cement and India Cement were down 1.5-3.5%.

Oil & gas producers Reliance Industries and ONGC dropped 1.2% and 0.6%, respectively, but oil marketing companies like BPCL, HPCL and IOC gained 0.8-1.6% due to sharp fall in crude oil prices since yesterday. WTI crude fell well below USD 80 a barrel after weak economic data that was down over 4%.

Infosys, country's second largest software services exporter went down 1.4% whereas rival TCS rose 0.5%.

India's largest lenders State Bank of India, ICICI Bank and HDFC Bank were down over 0.6% after the rating agency Moody’s downgraded 15 biggest global banks by 1-3 notches.

Among metals stocks, Tata Steel, Sterlite Industries and Hindalco Industries tanked 1.5% as copper slipped nearly 3% on the LME yesterday.

Top commercial vehicle maker Tata Motors fell 1% whereas M&M, Maruti and Hero Motocorp were up 0.6-1%.

Defensives like HUL and ITC were marginally higher. Drug producer Cipla outperformed, rising 2%.

Even the market breadth improved, though declining shares outnumbered advancing by 627 to 499 on the National Stock Exchange.