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NEW DELHI: Equity benchmarks Sensex and Nifty opened in the negative territory on Monday, breaking the winning momentum of last two consecutive sessions, as a fresh spell of selling emerged in bank stocks.
China market was closed and will remain so all week for Lunar New Year.
Other Asian peers logged gains but dollar's rise against its peers weighed on emerging market currencies and stocks.
The dollar hovered near a one-week high against the yen on Monday, buoyed by stronger-than-expected US jobs and factory data, Reuters reported.
Rupee's fall against the US dollar hit the sentiment.
The domestic unit on Monday opened 29 paise down at 71.54 against the dollar on account of some buying in American currency by banks and importers.
Sensex dropped over 150 points in opening deals and Nifty fell below 10,850.
Around 9:25 am, the Sensex kitty was 75 points, or 0.20 per cent, down at 36,394, while the Nifty was 40 points, or 0.37 per cent, down at 10,854.
BSE Midcap and Smallcap indices were 0.53 per cent and 0.57 per cent down, respectively, at that time.
YES Bank, ICICI Bank, Hero MotoCorp, Tata Steel and IndusInd Bank were among the top losers in the Sensex index, falling between 2 to 4 per cent.
However, ONGC, Reliance Industries, HCL Tech, Hindustan Unilever and HDFC Bank were in the green in the Sensex basket around that time.
Among the total 31 stocks (including Tata Motors DVR) in the Sensex kitty, 8 were in the green and 23 were in the red.
BSE Telecom, Auto and Bankex suffered losses of 1 per cent, leading among the sectoral losers.
Barring HDFC Bank, all components in the BSE Bankex index were in the red.
The BSE Auto pack was in a similar situation.
Only Motherson Sumi and Bajaj Auto were up with nominal gains, rest 14 stocks among the total 16, were incurring losses.
Some companies are set to announce their third-quarter earnings today and they are expected to be on investors' radar.
IDBI Bank, Lakshmi Vilas Bank, SPARC, Whirlpool of India, IRB Infra, Aban Offshore, Aditya Birla Fashion, Godrej Agrovet, GSK Pharma, Novartis India, Future Retail, Balrampur Chini, Welspun India, Reliance Naval are among the companies that will announce their December quarter results today.
Meanwhile, Foreign portfolio investors (FPIs) bought Rs 1,316 crore worth of domestic stocks on Friday, data available with NSE suggested.
DIIs were net sellers to the tune of Rs 5 crore, data suggested.
