Sensex, Nifty slip in morning trade; Rupee opens 5 paisa lower

• The Indian Rupee also opened in the red on Thursday, as it fell 5 paise to 82.72 against US dollar.
• Most of the Asian markets are trading in the red as in the morning.
• Valuations continue to be rich from the short-term perspective, but fair for long-term investors, say analysts.

Indian benchmark indices, the Nifty and the Sensex, opened in the red in early morning on Thursday, after crashing on Wednesday on global cues. The slide has continued at the time of publishing the copy with the Sensex down over 160 points and the Nifty below the 19,500 mark.

Sun Pharma, Bajaj Auto and NTPC are the top gainers while UPL, Titan and HDFC Life are the laggards. In early morning trade, Vedanta has fallen close to 7%, after reports emerged that the promoter group will sell stake in the company to repay debt. IRFC shot up 8% in early trade.

The Rupee also opened in the red on Thursday, as it fell 5 paise to 82.72 against US dollar. On Wednesday, rupee recorded its steepest single-day fall, falling 45 paise to settle at 82.67 against the dollar.

On Wednesday, benchmark indices closed around a percent lower with the Sensex shedding 676 points, and Nifty falling by 207 points. HUL, Nestle India, Asian Paints and Adani Enterprises are some of the gainers in early trade while Tata Steel, Tata Motors, Hero Motors and NTPC are the top laggards.

Dr V K Vijayakumar, chief investment strategist at Geojit Financial Services believes that often stock markets are impacted by unexpected events and valuations are high, the sell off will be sharp. That’s what happened in global markets after the Fitch downgrade of the US credit rating.

“The valuations in India continue to be rich from the short-term perspective, but fair for long-term investors. Weakness in the market may be used to slowly accumulate high quality stocks which have corrected. Leading stocks in banking, capital goods and construction-related segments look good for long-term investment,” said Vijayakumar.

The Dow Jones closed 0.9% lower on Thursday, while the Asian markets are still trading in the red.

While SGX Nifty traded flat, up by 0.07%, all the other three Asian markets were deep in the red. Korea’s KOSPI was down by 0.85%, Hong Kong’s Hang Seng was down by 0.19% while Japan’s Nikkei was deep in the red, down by 1.4%, as of 9:19 am.

The Brent crude went up by 0.3% to $82.68 per barrel, as of early morning.