Indian shares are likely to open lower on Friday, in line with the trend in the Asian equities, amidst caution ahead of a US deadline to impose tariffs on Chinese imports later in the day.

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The Singapore-traded SGX Nifty, an early indicator of NSE Nifty 50 Index's performance in India, was down 0.26 percent at 10,730 as of 0735 IST.

On Thursday, the Sensex snapped its two-day winning streak to end 71 points lower at 35,574.55 while the 50-share Nifty fell 20.15 points to end at 10,749.75.

The indices gained over 380 points in the previous two sessions, prompted by sustained buying by domestic institutional investors and the Modi government’s decision to go for higher MSP for kharif crops.

Among the top losers on Thursday, Reliance Industries slumped 2.53 percent after the oil-to-telecom conglomerate's chairman Mukesh Ambani unveiled ‘JioGigaFiber,’ a fixed-line broadband initiative. Ambani also announced plans for an e-commerce platform that may rival the likes of Amazon. As traders continued to sell-off equities, consumer durables, realty, IT, metal, teck, pharma, capital goods, power and oil and gas suffered losses.

A weaker rupee further weighed on investors' poor sentiment. The local currency weakened further against the US dollar to end at 68.95, breaching its previous closing low of 68.83 hit on August 28, 2013.

Selling by overseas investors have worsened the prospects for rupee. Foreign institutional investors sold shares worth Rs 284.58 crore, while DIIs bought shares to the tune of Rs 611.01 crore on the previous session.

In Thursday's Wall Street session, the Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 0.75 percent, the S&P 500 0.86 percent and the Nasdaq Composite 1.12 percent.

US and European shares were boosted by reassuring economic data from Germany, and as automakers' shares jumped, with German Chancellor Angela Merkel saying she would back lowering European Union tariffs on U.S. car imports after Washington offered to scrap threatened tariffs on European cars.

(With inputs from Reuters)

First Published:Jul 6, 2018 7:42 AM IST