Sensex, Nifty remain under pressure on profit booking

Indian equity benchmarks remained under pressure due to profit booking. The market had rallied nearly 600 points in previous four sessions on hopes of some monetary measures by Federal Reserve to revive sluggish US growth and some policy action by European Central Bank (ECB). However, Fed has kept rates unchanged yesterday and not announced any new policy steps, but signalled more willingness to take action.

On Tuesday, the Reserve Bank of India also had not changed any policy rates in its quarterly monetary policy review due to inflation above RBI's comfort level of 7%, which was also quite disappointing for the market.

Now globally every market is waiting for ECB's move that will happen around 17:15 hours IST today. Traders looked cautious as hopes of stimulus action by ECB thinned.

The BSE benchmark fell 93.53 points to 17,163.85 and the NSE benchmark was down 28 points to 5,212.20.

Country's largest lender State Bank of India and private sector lender HDFC Bank tanked 1.5% each while their rival ICICI Bank was down 0.4%.

Index heavyweight Reliance Industries, housing finance company HDFC and software services exporter Infosys and state-owned oil & gas producer lost 0.6%-1%.

Top commercial vehicle maker Tata Motors plunged more than 2%. Among others, shares of Tata Steel, Sterlite, M&M, Coal India and Tata Power were down 1-2%.

However, shares of ITC, Bharti, L&T, JSPL, TCS and Dr Reddy's Labs gained 0.2%-0.7%. NTPC, country's largest power generation company, rose 1.7%.

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