The Nifty 50 index was down 0.02% at 17,073.30 as of 11:53 a.m. IST. The S&P BSE Sensex fell 0.05% to 57,899.31.
Seven of the 13 major sectoral indexes declined, with the heavyweight financials index losing 0.1%. "There is lack of buying across the spectrum," said Saurabh Jain of SMC Securities.
"In a sideways market with negative bias, one finds very few avenues of solace with only 25% of stocks rising." The Nifty 50 is down 0.27% so far this week, on course to extend losses for a third straight week. Shares of asset management companies fell on Friday after Reuters reported that the government may propose investments in debt mutual funds be taxed as short-term capital gains. "As an asset class, debt mutual funds will get less attractive. Fixed deposits in banks may become more popular," said Amit Kumar Gupta, founder and Chief Investment Officer at Fintrekk Capital, HDFC Asset Management Co fell over 4.5%, UTI AMC Aditya Birla Sun Life AMC lost 2.5% each. IT stocks , bucked the trend and rose more than 0.65%, despite Accenture lowering its forecasts for annual revenue and profit and announcing about 19,000 job cuts, amid spillover concerns from global banking crisis. But analysts spotted positives for IT firms, such as record-high bookings, continuing demand for cloud, data, AI and securities among others.
"Accenture's record-high bookings indicates demand momentum
in IT sector despite weak macro," according to Motilal Oswal
Financial Services.
(Reporting by Bharath Rajeswaran in Bengaluru; Editing by Savio
D'Souza and Nivedita Bhattacharjee)
