Profit sales dragged Indian shares 0.7 percent lower on Monday, after shares climbed towards record-high level in early trade following their best week in nearly 16 months. Coal India, the state-run miner which made a stellar debut last week, fell 5.5 percent, as traders locked in gains.
"Any stock is good or bad at a particular price. After the run up last week, Coal India looked expensive," said Gajendra Nagpal, CEO of Unicon Financial. The stock had gained more than 40 percent above its issue price in the sessions last Thursday and Friday. State-run Power Grid Corp declined 3.6 percent after the electricity transmission utility fixed the price band for its up to $1.7 billion share sale at a 12-17 percent discount to its Friday's closing.
The 30-share BSE index declined 0.73 percent or 152.58 points to 20,852.38, with 21 of its components declining. The benchmark rose to as much as 21,075.71 in early trade, and was just around 130 points shy of posting a record high then. "Profit booking is always expected to creep in after such a rise. There has been a consensus building up that we should scale new record high soon," said Nagpal.
"Looks like, it may take some more time." Last week, the 30-share index gained 4.9 percent, its best weekly gain since July 2009. It is up 19.4 percent year to date, powered by foreign fund inflows of $26.6 billion. In the week to November 3, emerging market equities attracted more than $3 billion on the week, more than 85 percent of total equity fund inflows, data from EPFR showed late last week. This year, emerging equities have attracted $74.5 billion, not far from last year's record $83.3 billion inflow, the fund tracker said.
The country's no. 1 lender State Bank of India shed 1.9 percent ahead of its September quarter earnings announcement. A Reuters poll expects SBI to report a 22-percent rise in their July-September net profit at 30.3 billion rupees. Export-focused outsourcers declined after rising for all sessions so far in November. The sector index dropped 1.5 percent, but was still up 1.9 percent this month.
Leading software firms Tata Consultancy Services and Infosys Technologies shed 0.9 percent and 1.8 percent, while Wipro declined 1.4 percent. Advancing shares almost matched declining ones in number, on a better volume of 478 million shares. The 50-share NSE index dropped 0.6 percent to 6,273.20 points.