Mumbai, July 18
The Indian equity indices opened lower on Friday as heavyweights like Axis Bank and Bharti Airtel were among the top losers in the BSE benchmark.
At 9.25 am, Sensex was down 171 points or 0.21 per cent at 82,087 and Nifty was down 35 points or 0.14 per cent at 25,075.
In the Sensex pack, M&M, Tata Steel, Power Grid, L&T, UltraTech Cement, Infosys, Tata Motors, BEL, NTPC, TCS, Trent and Maruti Suzuki were top gainers. Axis Bank, Bharti Airtel, Kotak Mahindra Bank, Tech Mahindra , HDFC Bank, Eternal (Zomato),HUL, Sun Pharma, Bajaj Finance, ICICI Bank, Titan and Bajaj Finserv were top losers.
On the sectoral front, auto, IT, PSU bank, metal, realty, media, energy, infra, PSE and commodities were major gainers, while financial services, FMCG and private bank were in the red.
“In July, so far, India has been underperforming most markets, with a dip of 1.6 per cent in Nifty. A significant contributor to the decline is the selling by FIIs. There is a clear pattern in FII activity this year so far," said Dr VK Vijayakumar, Chief Investment Strategist, Geojit Investments Limited.
They were sellers in the first three months. For the next three months, they turned buyers and in the seventh month, the trends so far indicate further selling unless some positive news reverse the downtrend in the market.