Watch whether today's lows are breached on Monday

Nervousness ahead of Infosys' quarterly results and inflation numbers for March led to a lower opening for the Indian market, which resumed trade after a day's break yesterday. The Sensex was 27 points down to 19,670 and the Nifty shaved off 12 points from its previous close to open at 5,899. Staying in the red, the indices touched the day's high in initial trade with the Sensex rising to 19,701 and the Nifty to 5,907.

Lower-than-expected quarterly results from IT giant Infosys Technologies early in the day pushed the market further sharply southwards. The key barometers fell to 19,477 and 5,851, respectively. A marginal pull-back was observed later and the market was range-bound till the release of the headline inflation numbers for March. A nearly half a percent rise in the inflation figure to 8.98% from the previous month put further pressure on the market taking the indices to their intra-day lows. At the day's low, the Sensex tumbled 360 points to 19,337 and the Nifty fell 105 points to 5,806. The Sensex was 310 points down at 19,387 and the Nifty lost 87 points to 5,825. The advance decline on the National Stock Exchange was 518:886. Despite today's fall, the market is not signalling a new downturn. Watch whether today's lows are breached on Monday which will signal further weakness

The broader indices were better off than the Sensex with the BSE Mid-cap index settling 0.20% down and the BSE Small-cap index declining 0.17%.

Dogged by Infosys' lacklustre quarterly performance the BSE IT index (down 6.40%) was the top loser today. It was followed by BSE TECk (down 4.78%), BSE Realty (down 1.22%), BSE Bankex (down 0.95%) and BSE Power (down 0.87%). On the other hand, BSE Auto (up 0.12%), BSE Capital Goods (up 0.10%) and BSE Consumer Durables (up 0.09%) were the sectoral gainers.

Hero Honda (up 5.52%), Bharti Airtel (up 1.35%), Bajaj Auto (up 1.06%), Jaiprakash Associates (up 0.92%) and ITC (up 0.79%) were the top Sensex gainers. Infosys Technologies (down 9.59%) was the top loser today. Other major losers were Wipro (down 5.04%), DLF (down 2.43%), ICICI Bank (down 2.37%) and Hindustan Unilever (down 1.83%).

High prices of vegetables and manufactured items drove the headline inflation in March to 8.98%, way above the Reserve Bank of India's (RBI) expectation of 8% and higher than the 8.31% reading in February. Besides, food inflation, which accounts for nearly 15% of overall the WPI inflation, stood at 8.28% for the week ended 2nd April.

The rise in overall inflation for the second month in a row may prompt the central bank to go for another round of policy rate hikes in its policy review meeting, scheduled for 3rd May.

Most markets in Asia settled lower on Chinese inflation data, which enhanced concerns about rate hiked by the country's central bank once again. China's March CPI (consumer price index) rose 5.4% from a year earlier, above the 4.9% rise in February, the fastest inflation rate since July 2008. That apart, first-quarter gross domestic product (GDP) rose 9.7% on-year, down marginally from the 9.8% expansion in the fourth quarter of 2010.

The South Korean benchmark, which had touched an all-time high on Thursday, ended lower on profit booking. Fears of further policy tightening in China also hurt the Hong Kong market which settled in the red.

Overall, the Hang Seng shed 0.02%, the KLSE Composite declined 0.25%, the Nikkei 225 slid 0.65%, the Straits Times was down 0.18%, the Seoul Composite fell by 0.03% and the Taiwan Weighted tanked 0.96%. On the other hand, the Shanghai Composite gained 0.27% and the Jakarta Composite climbed 0.61%.

Back home, institutional investors' participation was lacking on Wednesday. Foreign institutional investors pumped in a meagre Rs25.60 crore in the equities segment while domestic institutional investors pulled out Rs 4.80 crore.

Ahluwalia Contracts (India) (up 1.83%) has secured new orders totalling around Rs 535 crore in the fourth quarter of 2010-11 for construction related projects. The company received orders aggregating Rs 141.50 crore and Rs 184 crore for construction of residential and commercial buildings. Further, it has secured orders worth Rs 142.18 crore for construction of hotels and Rs 34 crore for construction of institutional buildings. Also, orders worth Rs 33.02 crore were bagged in services segment.

Pennar Industries' (down 1.28%) subsidiary Pennar Engineered Building Systems (PEBS) has bagged an order from Larsen & Toubro for the first phase of construction of pre-engineered steel buildings for Chennai Metro Railway. This order involves design and construction of the workshop buildings, stabling yard and the infrastructure shed to be set up at Koyambedu in Chennai city.

Oracle Financial Services Software (down 2.20%) has informed that Colombia-based Helm Bank has selected Oracle software and hardware to run its core banking, customer-facing services and marketing functions. Helm Bank's platform includes Oracle FLEXCUBE Universal Banking running on Oracle Exadata Database Machine which delivers extreme performance.