Sensex falls over 170 points, Nifty slips below 10,800

New Delhi: Markets opened in red on Monday with the Nifty slipping below 10,800 level amidst weakness in other Asian markets amid heavy selling by foreign investors.

The BSE Sensex fell 176.49 points or 0.49 percent to 35,833.35 while the NSE Nifty dropped 59.10 points or 0.55 percent to 10,735.85 in early trade.

The biggest losers in the Sensex pack were Axis Bank, L&T, Tata Steel, Vedanta, HDFC, M&M, IndusInd Bank, Bharti Airtel, TCS, ICICI Bank, NTPC and SBI, falling up to 1.61 percent.

On a net basis, foreign portfolio investors (FPIs) sold shares worth Rs 687.20 crore Friday, while domestic institutional investors (DIIs) were net buyers to the tune of Rs 123.17 crore, provisional data available with BSE showed.

Asian shares turned down on Monday as China trade data started trickling in and as investors looked to key corporate earnings later in the week to take the pulse of a cooling global economy, a Reuters report said.

MSCI’s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan stumbled 0.7 percent after climbing to the highest since early December on Friday, with Chinese and Hong Kong shares the biggest losers.

With Agency Inputs