Indian Stocks End Lower; Realty, Power Shares Gain

Indian stocks markets ended lower for a straight second session on Friday, as weak trend in global markets weighed on the sentiment.

The benchmark BSE Sensex declined 0.25 percent, or 49.12 points, to 19,732.76. The 50 share NSE Nifty fell 0.10 points, to 5,850.60.

Markets opened on a weak note, tracking negative cues from Asian peers and Wall Street overnight. Both the bench mark indices witnessed a volatile session as rupee declined sharply for the first time in seven sessions, while weak trend in Asian peers also dampened sentiment.

Markets recovered from initial losses and entered into positive territory during morning trade, helped by gains in capital goods, realty and power sector shares. However, weakness in consumer durables, IT and FMCG sectors pulled down bench mark indices back into the negative territory.

Among the 13 BSE sectoral indices, consumer durables plunged 1.54 percent and IT sector declined 1.43 percent while realty sector surged 2.72 percent and power sector rose 2.47 percent.

The overall market breadth is positive with 1351 advances against 1038 declines on the BSE.

Asian stock markets mostly ended lower on Friday as investors opted for caution ahead of a key US Federal Reserve meeting next week, where the central bank is expected announce a reduction in its $85 billion in monthly bond purchases as the economy improves.

“We still consider equity markets vulnerable in the short term. In spite of our optimistic medium- to longer-term outlook, we stay on the sidelines for the time being. Markets are eagerly awaiting the Fed meeting next week,” Anja Hochberg, chief investment officer for Europe and Switzerland at Credit Suisse Group AG in Zurich, told Bloomberg.

China's Shanghai Composite fell 0.86 percent and Hong Kong's Hang Seng declined 0.17 percent, while South Korea's KOSPI fell 0.49 percent and Japan's benchmark Nikkei 225 gained 0.12 percent.