Photo : The Hindu Business Line

Chennai, India (BBN) – The Sensex and Nifty were trading flat as participants trimmed their positions, triggered by lower GDP numbers and core industries growth.
At 10:25am, the 30-share BSE index Sensex was up 43.57 points or 0.14 per cent at 31,189.37 and the 50-share NSE index Nifty was up 2.4 points or 0.02 per cent at 9,623.65, reports The Hindu Business Line.
Among BSE sectoral indices, healthcare index was the star-performer and was up 2.11 per cent, followed by FMCG 1.13 per cent, auto 0.73 per cent and realty 0.54 per cent.
On the other hand, oil & gas index was down 0.59 per cent, metal 0.58 per cent, banking 0.26 per cent and PSU 0.12 per cent.
Top five Sensex gainers were Sun Pharma (+2.91%), HUL (+2.34%), Hero MotoCorp (+1.72%), Cipla (+1.44%) and Lupin (+1.31%), while the major losers were ONGC (-1.36%), Asian Paints (-1.18%), ICICI Bank (-1.07%), Tata Steel (-1.04%) and GAIL (-0.82%).
Trading sentiment suffered a setback after macroeconomic indicators such as GDP numbers and core sector growth showed that the country’s economic growth has slowed down.
India’s economic growth slowed to 7.1 per cent in 2016-17, the year in which 87 per cent of the currency was demonetised, despite a very good showing by the agricultural sector.
The Gross Domestic Product (GDP) was 6.1 per in the January-March quarter, the immediate three months after the demonetisation was affected on November 9, 2016.
The growth of eight core sectors declined to 2.5 per cent in April, mainly due to lower coal, crude oil and cement productions, too dampened trading sentiment.
EARLY TRADE
The Sensex , which had lost 13.60 points in the previous session, fell by another 75.33 points or 0.24 per cent to 31,070.47.
The Nifty also fell 22.80 points or 0.23 per cent to 9,598.45.
Shares of state-run oil marketing companies such as BPCL, HPCL and IOC were trading in negative zone with losses up to 1.97 per cent despite a hike in petrol and diesel prices.
Meanwhile, foreign portfolio investors (FPIs) bought shares worth Rs. 1,048.93 crore, while domestic institutional investors (DIIs) sold shares worth a net Rs. 939.54 crore yesterday, as per provisional data.
ASIAN SHARES
Sterling retreated on Thursday on fears that Prime Minister Theresa May could lose control of parliament in Britain’s June 8 election, while conflicting signals on the health of China’s manufacturing sector kept most Asian stock markets in check.
Sterling retreated 0.1 per cent to $1.2877 after a YouGov poll showed May could be well short of the number of seats needed to form a government, raising the prospect of political turmoil just as formal Brexit talks begin.
BBN/SS/ANS