Nifty slips, fails to defend 9,900-level

Mumbai: Taking a breather after its recent rally, benchmark Nifty slipped 5 points on Friday as investors preferred to book profits in IT, realty, media, metal and auto counters amid higher global cues.

The 50-share index surpassed the 9,900-mark for the first time in intra-day trade following positive leads from Asian markets and Infosys earnings, but could not hold on to the level for long.

The market was range bound with negative bias for major part of the session.

Overseas, European stock markets were trading slightly higher while most Asian stocks rose in anticipation of US inflation data and earnings from some of the large banks.

The Nifty opened higher at 9,913.30, a new intra-day record, but later slipped to 9,845.45 before ending at 9,886.35, a marginal loss of 5.35 points, or 0.05 percent.

It saw an intra-day movement of about 67.85 points.

Sector-wise, IT fell 1.05 percent, followed by Realty (0.72 percent), Media (0.44 percent), Metal (0.42 percent), Auto (0.42 percent) and FMCG (0.19 percent).

However, PSU Bank gained 0.96 percent, Pharma 0.84 percent, Energy 0.77 percent and Infra 0.30 percent.

Major index gainers were Aurobindo Pharma (5.87 percent), GAIL (4.92 percent), ACC (3.03 percent), NTPC (2.07 percent), Bharti Infratel (1.75 percent), Kotak Mahindra Bank (1.36 percent) and Bank of Baroda (0.95 percent).

Losers included IOC (2.06 percent), TCS (2 percent), Tata Motors (1.69 percent), Wipro (1.59 percent), Tata Motors DVR (1.39 percent), Coal India (1.12 percent) and HCL Tech (1 percent).

A total of 1,111 scrips declined, 592 declined, while 81 remained unchanged. Total securities that hit their price bands were 121.

Turnover in the cash segment fell to 27,523.48 crore from Rs 28,366.74 crore yesterday.

A total of 14,587.93 lakh shares changed hands in 9,594,452 trades. The market capitalisation of listed firms on the NSE stood at Rs 1,28,99,946.41 crore.