After a brief positive opening on Wednesday, Indian equity markets erased most of its early gains to trade at marginal losses on profit booking by traders. Positive global cues, like rising US equities, didn't have much impact on Indian investors' sentiments.
Key market benchmark Sensex was trading marginally lower at 25,930.73 points, down 0.12 percent at 10.40 am. Similarly, 50 share index Nifty was down 0.16 percent at 7,990.05 in the initial trade.
Shares of HDFC were one of the major losers and were trading 2.87 percent lower on Wednesday. Other companies like BPCL, Wipro, Power Grid Corporation and Maruti Suzuki were also trading in the red.
However, stocks of L&T, Hindalco, Asian Paints, Tata Steel and Tata Motors bucked the trend and saw buying from investors.
Among sectors, capital goods, metals, healthcare and consumer durables were supporting the market indices, while bank index was pulling the market down.
Market breadth remained positive with mid-cap and small-cap indices gaining on early trade. There were a total of 1,300 advances and 739 declines at National Stock Exchange.
With continuing cash crunch faced by businesses owing to demonetisation, analysts have opined that some small and medium enterprises (SMEs) could wind up businesses as they might not be able to cope up in the new environment.
Similarly, earnings growth of Indian firms for third and fourth quarter has already been slashed by brokerages putting pressure on stock prices.
Globally, Wall Street's record run continued on hopes of fiscal policies of US President-elect Donald Trump. This pushed Asian markets on a higher trajectory.
On rupee front, the Indian currency was up 0.30 percent at 68.30 per dollar in the early morning trade.
