Sensex, Nifty marginally lower; rupee falls 30 paise

The BSE Sensex and NSE Nifty opened moderately lower on Friday following downtrend in Asian markets. Weak global data and endless eurozone woes continued to weigh on markets globally.

Profit booking may be another reason as the market rallied 1.7% yesterday. The BSE benchmark was down 50.83 points to 16171.47 and the NSE benchmark fell 18.25 points to 4,903.15.

Even the rupee too depreciated again; it fell 30 paise to 55.95 a dollar today after showing a recovery of 65 paise from record low yesterday.

State-owned ONGC and BPCL were down around 1% on profit booking.

Hindalco fell 1.6% due to disappointing numbers by subsidiary Novelis.

Maruti Suzuki, Infosys, Tata Motors, ITC (down 0.7% ahead of numbers), SBI, Reliance Industries, ICICI Bank and Larsen & Toubro too were under pressure.

However, JP Associates, Sun Pharma (rose 1.5% after good numbers by subsidiary Taro), Bharti Airtel, Bajaj Auto and IDFC were supporting the market.

The broader markets were flat while the market breadth was neutral.

In the second line shares, Voltas shot up 7% good set of numbers in Q4FY12.

JM Financial and TVS Motor gained 3% each on results. Shree Ganesh Jewellery spiked 12% on strong results while Jet Airways fell 2% due to bad results 

Subex surged 4.5% and Allied Digital rallied 9.5% on value punting. VIP Industries rose 1%.

Future Capital went up 3% as CNBC-TV18 quoting sources reported that Future group and Warburg management are likely to meet on Friday to sign term sheet.

However, Lanco Infratech, Indiabulls Securities, Mahindra Satyam and SKS Microfinance were down around 1-1.5%.

Asian markets too were down marginally. Greece's future in the euro zone remains a primary risk for stocks. At least half of euro zone governments, as well as banks and large companies, are making contingency plans in case Greece decides to leave.

"The risk-off trade is very much the order of the day, so long as the potential contagion effect remains," said Milligan. "We don't know what policies might be proposed to keep Greece in the EU, and how Greece might respond to them."

(With inputs from Reuters)