Indian equities opened the day sluggishly following negative global signals.

Among the prominent losers this morning, realty, banking, metal and oil & gas stocks topped the list with sharp losses.

Auto, power, PSU, information technology, telecom, pharma and FMCG stocks were also down.

Mirroring heavy selling action, all the sectoral indices were trading in the red zone with heavy losses.

Asian stocks also declined, led by commodity producers and banks, after Royal Bank of Scotland Group’s prediction of the biggest loss in UK business history increased fear that the worldwide recession is intensifying.

BSE Midcap and Smallcap index lost 1.31% and 0.56% respectively.

The 30-share index, BSE Sensex, today (Tuesday, January 20), opened at 9,159 after making a loss of 169.81 points, as against its last closure in which it closed with a gain of 5.98 points.

At 10:15 a.m., Sensex lost 219.46 points at 9,110.11 after hitting a high of 9,159.76 and a low of 9,075.68. In the meantime, the broad based Nifty stood at 2,775.05, down 71.15 points.

Overall market breadth was sharply negative. On BSE, 617 stocks posted sharp losses, 161 advanced while 13 stocks remained unchanged.

There were no gainers at the BSE Sensex.

The major losers in the Sensex were Bharti Airtel, Mahindra & Mahindra, HDFC Bank, HDFC, DLF, Reliance Communications, ICICI Bank, Maruti Suzuki, ONGC, Tata Steel, Reliance Industries, State Bank of India, Sterlite Industries, Larsen & Toubro, Reliance Infrastructure, Tata Power, Hindalco, Sun Pharmaceuticals, Jaiprakash Associates, Grasim Industries, Ambuja Cements, Zee Entertainment, SAIL, Cairn India, Power Grid Corporation, Idea Cellular, Nalco, ABB, GAIL India, Reliance Capital, Tata Communications, HCL Technologies, Reliance, BPCL, Hero Honda, Ranbaxy, Infosys Technologies, Reliance Power and Grasim Industries.

Stock market analyst, Vishwas Agarwal stated that BSE 9,350 and Nifty 2,826 levels are very important to carry on comfy trading market.

He said that in intraday, these levels may breach in today’s trading session, but the stock market above these levels will provide chance in index based frontline stocks with nominal stop loss.

Mr. Agarwal said, “As there is restricted downside, upside chances are higher due to price erosion in same settlement sharply.”

As per Agarwal, any positive event will boost market sentiments.

Barrack Obama will take oath in as the new President of the United States of America today and may perhaps bring some positive sentiment to global equities. Obama takes charge when the world is in a huge economic crisis and addressing this financial crisis will be his top priority.