MUMBAI: Indian markets were witnessing selling pressure on concerns of interest rate hike fears. Lack of supportive cues from Asian peers also dampened sentiments. Analysts are advising traders to remain cautious as weakness in benchmarks may emerge as the session progresses. From medium term perspective, they expect the market to stage a pull-back.

“With most sectors excluding CNX Bank index are trading at medium term support levels, the probability of Nifty staging a pullback is very strong and we expect it to be range bound with positive bias in coming weeks. The uptrend is expected to remain intact as long as Nifty holds the channel support on weekly closing basis which is at 5,700 levels,” said IIFL report.

At 11 am; Bombay Stock Exchange’s Sensex was at 19519.79, down 172.02 points or 0.87 per cent. The 30-share index touched a high of 19720.43 and low of 19464.76 in trade so far.

National Stock Exchange’s Nifty was at 5841.55, down 63.05 points or 1.07 per cent. The broader index touched a high of 5907.25 and low of 5832.90 intraday.

BSE Midcap Index was down 0.70 per cent and BSE Smallcap Index moved 0.84 per cent lower.

All the sectoral indices were in the red. BSE Capital Goods Index was down 2.20 per cent, BSE Auto Index slipped 1.27 per cent and BSE Healthcare Index declined 0.97 per cent.

Larsen & Toubro (-2.16%), HDFC (-2.16%), HDFC Bank (-2.09%), Wipro (-1.42%) and BHEL (-1.34%) were amongst the losers.

Reliance Infrastructure (2.32%), Sterlite Industries (1.87%), HUL (1.25%), Infosys Technologies (1.11%) and SBI (1.09%) were amongst the top Nifty gainers.