Indian shares snapped a two-week losing streak but closed Friday 0.5 percent lower on weak world equities and as traders turned cautious on near-term outlook. Top outsourcer Tata Consultancy Services rose as much as 6.7 percent to a record high of 1,049.90 rupees, after beating September-quarter earnings estimate, while rival Wipro shed as much as 5.4 percent as it lagged forecast.
Tata Consultancy hits all-time high The 30-share BSE index shed 0.47 percent or 94.72 points to 20,165.86, with 22 of its components closing in the red. It rose 0.2 percent on the week. "The market may be forming an intermediate top," said Sandip Sabharwal, CEO of portfolio management services at brokerage Prabhudas Lilladher, who did not rule out a small correction in near future. "More or less, we have seen decent results. But, they are largely turning to be a non-event for the broader market this time, considering the sharp run up before the results."
So far this year, foreign funds have invested a net $23.8 billion in Indian equities, driving the benchmark index up 15.5 percent. Investors shovelled in another $5.8 billion into emerging market funds in the third week of October, with global emerging market equity funds seeing record inflows for the second time in three weeks, fund tracker EPFR said.
India's benchmark index has outperformed MSCI's world equities index and its emerging markets index, which have gained 5.4 percent and 11.4 percent respectively. "We continue to believe that we are entering another period of strong growth for tier 1 Indian IT companies," Credit Suisse said in a note. It raised its target price on TCS to 1,175 rupees from 940 rupees and maintained an "outperform" rating.
TCS closed 5.7 percent higher after the No 1 Indian software services company posted a near 30-percent rise in quarterly profit and said it expected strong demand for outsourcing. Infosys Technologies gained 0.7 percent. Wipro, the third-largest outsourcer, closed 4.5 percent lower after it missed forecast with a 10-percent rise in second-quarter profit.
Cigarette-to-hotel business ITC shed 1.8 percent, after rising 3.7 percent in the previous session. Top-listed biotech firm Biocon closed 0.3 percent higher as its July-September net profit rose by a fifth from a year ago. Declining shares outnumbered advancing ones in the ratio of 1.2:1, on a heavy volume of 561 million shares. The 50-share NSE index dropped 0.6 percent to 6,066.05 points.