The BSE Sensex and the NSE Nifty 50 on Wednesday opened flat tracking weakness among global and Asian peers.

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The broader sentiment remains subdued as US President Donald Trump’s July 6 deadline to impose tariffs on Chinese imports running into billions of dollars nears. Beijing has said that it will respond with its own tariffs on US imports.

Investors fear that the US decision will escalate trade conflict between the world’s top economy vis-à-vis other leading economies and spark a wave of protectionist measures to the detrimental of the global economy.

For Indian markets the silver lining, however, was the rupee opening marginally stronger against the US dollar at 68.52. The rupee had closed at 68.58 aided by dollar-selling by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) on Tuesday.

In the early trade on the two benchmark indexes, the Sensex rose by 15.45 points, or 0.04 percent, to 35,394.10, while the Nifty was up by 3.00 points, or 0.03 percent, to 10,702.90.

Top gainers include Lupin, Power Grid, Dr Reddy Labs, Sun Pharma, HDFC, Reliance, HUL. Major laggards were Hindalco, Vedanta, Grasim, HPCL, ONGC, Tata Motors, Adani Ports, Yes Bank.

Both Nifty MidCap and Sensex MidCap were marginally down. Shriram Transport is down by 10 percent, while Fortis Healthcare slips by over 3 percent.

On Tuesday, the Indian market recovered from opening lows to close largely higher pulled by IT and energy stocks. The Nifty gained 70 points from lows to end 43 points in the green at 10,700, while the Sensex moved 114 points higher to close at 35,379.

Asian stocks remained volatile in early trade and later extended losses with Hong Kong’s Hang Seng down by over a percent, while Japan’s Nikkei trading lower by almost half a percent. The Chinese yuan stood near 11-month lows as the specter of a Sino-US trade war haunted investors ahead of an end-of-week deadline for US tariffs on billions of dollars worth of Chinese imports.

MSCI's broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan edged up 0.1 percent in early trade, a day after it hit a nine-month low. Japan's Nikkei lost 0.5 percent.

The Wall Street gave up early gains in a truncated session overnight ahead of the Independence Day holiday on Wednesday, while technology shares came under pressure just a day after their solid start for the quarter on Monday. The S&P 500 lost 0.49 percent while the Nasdaq Composite dropped 0.86 percent.

First Published:Jul 4, 2018 9:53 AM IST