Indian stock markets open in the red

Indo-Asian News Service
Mumbai, Feb 22(IANS) Indian equities markets opened in the red Friday on negative cues from Asian peers. There was heavy selling of banking, auto and consumer goods stocks during initial trade.
The 30-share benchmark sensitive index of the Bombay Stock Exchange opened with a loss of 219.06 points at 17,515.62. Twenty minutes into trading, the Sensex fell further to 17,432.30, a loss of nearly 300 points from Thursday's close.

Around the same time, the S&P Nifty of the National Stock Exchange was at 5,137, down 55 points from its previous close. The market breadth was negative with low volumes. In the initial trade 492 scrips advanced, 1,100 declined and 24 remained unchanged.

Other Asian markets were also trading weak. Hong Kong's Hang Seng fell 1.93 percent, Japan's Nikkei slipped 1.93 percent, Taiwan's Taiwan Weighted was down 0.40 percent, Singapore's Straits Times plunged 0.92 percent and South Korea's Seoul Composite declined 1 percent.

In the Indian market, Centurion Bank of Punjab was the top-traded counter Frriday morning, up 7 percent. Bajaj Auto, ABB, GAIL, HDFC bank , DLF, Reliance Energy, Reliance, ICICI Bank and NTPC were among the top laggards on the indices.