Nifty slips below March low; Midcap, Smallcap plunge 1-2%

10:50am Market Update: Equity benchmarks extended losses with the Nifty trading at lowest level since January 9, 2015. The Sensex dropped 195.95 points to 27241.99 and the Nifty slipped 73.90 points to 8231.35.

The market breadth weakend further as about 1690 shares have declined against 433 shares advanced on the Bombay Stock Exchange.

10:35am Market Expert: The market is prone to trade between 7800-8200 due to lack of substantial triggers, tepid earnings and expectation of weak monsoons, says Harendra Kumar of Elara Capital.

According to him, there is nothing exciting in the market right now and therefore, there are not too many stocks to buy given the expensive valuations.

10:16am Market Update: The market extended losses, falling below its March low, dragged by banking & financials (except ICICI Bank), healthcare and capital goods stocks. The Sensex plunged 134.84 points to 27303.10 and the Nifty fell 54.65 points to 8250.60.

10:05am Petronet LNG dives: Discussing the results, RK Garg, Director Finance, Petronet LNG, said the company has been trying to mitigate issues raised after sudden drop in crude prices, which in turn affected customers’ buying capacity.

In an interview, Garg said the company’s long-term volumes have reduced significantly in Q4 and that 75 percent of capacity is under long-term contracts.

“Buyers not taking quantities due to fall in crude prices will pay penalty, which is paid yearly, not on quarterly basis,” he said.

According to Garg, improvement in margins will depend on offtakes. He hopes to see some (improvement) in the next two months.

10:00am Market Check

The market continued to consolidate ahead of expiry of April derivative contracts this week. The Sensex fell 47.74 points to 27390.20 and the Nifty declined 27.55 points to 8277.70.

The broader markets underperformed benchmarks with the BSE Midcap and Smallcap indices losing 1.4 percent and 2 percent, respectively. Nearly 3 shares declined for every share advancing on the Bombay Stock Exchange.

Rakesh Arora, Macquarie said Indian market has been hurt due to negative sentiment surrounding MAT on FII investments.

According to him, earnings season is also panning out weak as expected and the first Met report on the monsoon is also not encouraging. He feels stocks, post a 15-20 percent correction, would be cheap and worth buying on dips.

Shares of Infosys, Larsen & Toubro, SBI, Sun Pharma, Mahindra & Mahindra, Cipla, Hero Motocorp, Tata Steel and GAIL dropped 1-1.5 percent while ITC and NTPC gained more than 1 percent. For mOre information please visit this site www.appsmine.org