Mumbai: Equities traded lower during early hours on Wednesday amid weak global cues with auto and realty indices showing the most losses.
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) cut its growth forecasts for the global economy for this year and the next. Global growth is forecast at 3.2 percent in 2019, picking up to 3.5 percent in 2020 — 0.1 percent point lower than in April projections for both years.
At 10:15 am, the BSE S&P Sensex was down 197 points at 37,786 while the Nifty 50 slipped 71 points to 11,260.
Except for financial services, all sectoral indices at the National Stock Exchange were in the red. Nifty metal was down 1.21 percent, auto 1.17 percent and realty 1.16 percent.
Among stocks, Bharat Petroleum Corporation edged 3.2 percent lower while Vedanta was down 2 percent. Eicher Motors, JSW Steel and Britannia were down by over 1.6 percent each.
However, HDFC gained 1.6 percent while Yes Bank moved up by 1.5 percent. The other gainers were Larsen & Toubro, Hindustan Lever and Zee Entertainment.
Meanwhile, most stocks rose in Asia after reports that the United States and China will resume trade talks next week with US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer travelling to Shanghai.
Japan’s Nikkei added 0.5 percent, MSCI’s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan gained 0.4 percent and Chinese blue chips climbed 1.2 percent.