Bourses continue to trade lower in late afternoon session

The BSE Sensex is currently trading at 65173.56, down by 365.86 points or 0.56% after trading in a range of 65046.10 and 65535.14. There were 9 stocks advancing against 21 stocks declining on the index.

The broader indices were trading in green; the BSE Mid cap index gained 0.18%, while Small cap index was up by 0.23%.

The only gaining sectoral indices on the BSE were Consumer Durables up by 1.24% and PSU was up by 0.08%, while Utilities down by 0.92%, FMCG down by 0.72%, Capital Goods down by 0.70%, Energy down by 0.70% and Oil & Gas was down by 0.66% were the top losing indices on BSE.

The top gainers on the Sensex were Titan Company up by 1.64%, Axis Bank up by 0.93%, SBI up by 0.55%, Bajaj Finserv up by 0.52% and Mahindra & Mahindra up by 0.30%. On the flip side, ITC down by 2.12%, Power Grid down by 1.94%, Larsen & Toubro down by 1.47%, Nestle down by 1.27% and Reliance Industries down by 1.20% were the top losers.

Meanwhile, in an effort to boost the digital economy of India, drive digital access to services and support India’s IT and electronics ecosystem, the Union Cabinet has approved the expansion of the Digital India programme with an outlay of Rs 14,903 crore. Digital India programme was launched on July 1, 2015 to enable digital delivery of services to citizens. It has proved to be a very successful program.

Under the Digital India programme, 6.25 lakh IT professionals will be re-skilled and up-skilled under the FutureSkills Prime Programme; 2.65 lakh persons will be trained in information security under the Information Security & Education Awareness Phase (ISEA) Programme and 540 additional services will be available under the Unified Mobile Application for New-age Governance (UMANG) app/ platform. At present over 1,700 services are already available on UMANG.

Besides, this programme would enable modernisation of the National Knowledge Network (NKN) which connects 1,787 educational institutions. Digital document verification facility under DigiLocker will now be available to MSMEs and other organisations; 1,200 startups will be supported in Tier 2/3 cities and 3 Centres of Excellence in Artificial Intelligence on health, agriculture and sustainable cities will be set up.

The CNX Nifty is currently trading at 19360.90, down by 104.10 points or 0.53% after trading in a range of 19326.25 and 19461.55. There were 17 stocks advancing against 33 stocks declining on the index.

The top gainers on Nifty were Adani Ports up by 3.64%, Titan Company up by 1.55%, Axis Bank up by 1.00%, Bajaj Auto up by 0.86% and SBI up by 0.60%. On the flip side, ITC down by 2.22%, Power Grid down by 1.98%, LTIMindtree down by 1.79%, Divi's Lab down by 1.64% and Larsen & Toubro down by 1.51% were the top losers.

Asian markets were trading mostly in red, Nikkei 225 slipped 140.82 points or 0.45% to 31,626.00, Straits Times fell 10.79 points or 0.34% to 3,202.79, KOSPI dropped 5.79 points or 0.23% to 2,519.85 and Hang Seng was down by 2.67 points or 0.01% to 18,326.63. On the flip side, Shanghai Composite strengthened 13.61 points or 0.43% to 3,163.74 and Taiwan Weighted was up by 69.88 points or 0.42% to 16,516.66.

European markets were trading lower, UK’s FTSE 100 decreased 23.69 points or 0.32% to 7,333.19, France’s CAC fell 12.85 points or 0.18% to 7,247.40 and Germany’s DAX was down by 20.86 points or 0.13% to 15,768.59.