Indian shares reverse course as IT drags; U.S. inflation data eyed

Indian shares gave up early gains on Wednesday as tech stocks slipped, while traders looked ahead to U.S. inflation data for clues on the pace of rate hikes from the Federal Reserve.

At session lows in morning trade, the NSE Nifty 50 index (.NSEI) was down 0.47% at 17,442.80, and the S&P BSE Sensex (.BSESN) declined 0.46% to 58,583.36.

“We are seeing some sort of cautiousness in domestic equities because of the strong U.S. jobs data last week increasing probability of a bigger-sized rate hike by the Federal Reserve,” said Shrikant Chouhan, head of retail equity research at Kotak Securities.

The market is likely to remain range-bound as investors look for the U.S. Consumer Price Index numbers, which will come in the evening, he added.

The Nifty IT index was the worst-performing sector, falling as much as 1.7%, suffering a second straight session of loss tracking overnight weakness in tech-heavy Nasdaq.

The benchmark indexes had gained over 0.2% each in early trade, hovering at near four-month highs hit in the previous session, lifted by consumer and banking sectors. Indian markets were closed on Tuesday for a holiday.

Source By: Reuters