Markets on Monday opened on a flat note. While the benchmark BSE Sensex opened at 34,750, NSE Nifty 50 Index traded at 10,476. At 9:45 AM, Sensex was down by 58.37 (0.17%) to trade at 34,670.02 while Nifty was down by 32.70 (0.31%) to reach at 10,440.60 mark.
Shares of Hindustan Unilever are down around 3 percent even as the firm reported 20 percent jump in Q2 net profit at Rs 1,525 crore. IT giant Infosys were among the top gainers.
Besides HUL, Asian Paints, ICICI Bank and Mahindra and Mahindra were also among the Nifty losers.
On Friday, Sensex had ended 732 points higher at 34,733 while the Nifty had settled at 10,472, up 237 points.
Asian shares slipped on Monday as worries over Sino-U.S. trade disputes, a possible slowdown in the Chinese economy and higher U.S. borrowing costs tempered optimism despite a rebound in global equities late last week.
Not helping the mood, oil prices jumped and Saudi Arabian shares tumbled on rising diplomatic tensions between Riyadh and the West after the monarchy warned against threats to punish it over disappearance of a journalist.
MSCI's broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan fell 0.3 percent while Japan's Nikkei dropped 0.9 percent.
MSCI's broadest gauge of the world's stock markets , was off 0.1 percent after a sizable 3.87 percent decline last week to a one-year nadir, and marking its biggest weekly fall since March.
Meanwhile, the rupee dropped 36 paise to 73.93 against the US currency in early trade Monday, breaking its three-day recovery trend, as crude prices rose amid weak macro economic data.
A spurt in dollar demand from importers amid sustained foreign fund outflows also weighed on the rupee.
Dealers said, factors like the dollar's strength against some other currencies overseas and a volatile opening of the equity markets also impacted the domestic currency.
