Indian share markets witnessed huge selling pressure during closing hours today and ended on a negative note.

At the closing bell, the BSE Sensex stood lower by 400 points.

The NSE Nifty ended down by 104 points.

Hero MotoCorp was among the top gainers today.

Nestle Indian and Asian Paints, on the other hand, were among the top losers today.

SGX Nifty was trading at 15,196, down by 132 points, at the time of writing.

The BSE Mid Cap index ended flat, while the BSE Small Cap index ended up by 0.5%.

On the sectoral front, stocks in the IT sector, banking sector, and pharma sector witnessing maximum selling pressure.

Power stocks on the other hand ended in the green.

Asian share markets ended mixed today.

As of the most recent closing prices, the Nikkei ended down by 0.58%, while the Hang Seng ended higher by 1.1%.

US stock futures are trading flat with the Dow Futures trading down by 3 points (down 0.01%).

The rupee is trading at 72.76 against the US$.

Gold prices for the latest contract on MCX are trading down by 0.7% at Rs 46,561 per 10 grams.

In global markets, gold prices fell to near two-week lows amid a stronger US dollar and hardening of US bond yields.

Tracking softer global prices, gold prices in India skidded for the fifth day in a row.

Note that the recent fall in global rates and import duty cut in the Budget has pushed gold prices in India to near multi-month lows. In August gold had hit a record high of Rs 56,200 per 10 grams.

In news from the IPO space...

Mumbai-based Macrotech Developers, formerly known as Lodha Developers, has filed a draft red herring prospectus (DRHP) for its proposed initial public offering with the Indian stock market regulator.

The IPO size is about Rs 25 billion.

Microtech Developers had appointed ten merchant bankers for the proposed share sale. Kotak Securities, Axis Capital, and JP Morgan have been named lead advisors for the issue, said multiple people aware of the matter. Other investment banks appointed by Macrotech Developers include JM Financial, SBI Caps, ICICI Securities, Edelweiss Securities, IIFL Securities, Yes Securities, and Bank of Baroda Capital.

This is the realtor's third attempt at launching a public offering after 2009 and 2018. The group attempted to launch a Rs 28 billion IPO first in 2009 but had to drop its plan due to the uncertain macro-economic environment in the aftermath of the global financial crisis.

It then re-attempted to launch an IPO in 2018, and even got SEBI's nod for the share sale but had to shelve its plans yet again due to the liquidity crisis in the real estate sector.

Lodha Group's proposed IPO size of Rs 25 billion is almost half of the Rs 55 billion the group had intended to raise in 2018.

The proceeds from the share sale are expected to be used to pare down debt, which stood at Rs 171.7 billion as of March 2020.

The group reported consolidated revenues of Rs 124.8 billion as of FY 2019-2020 and profits of Rs 7.4 billion.

As of March 2020, Lodha Group had 38 projects spread over 23 million square feet, including marquee projects like the Trump Tower in India and Grosvenor Square in London, UK. It also had 19 projects in the planning stage at the time.

In other news, the Rs 8.2-billion initial public offer (IPO) of RailTel Corporation of India continued to see good subscriptions for the second day of bidding on February 17.

The issue was subscribed 5.32 times at the time of closing stock market hours today with strong support from retail investors whose reserved portion saw a 9.6 times subscription.

The mini-Ratna PSU is one of the largest neutral telecom infrastructure providers in the country owning an optic fiber network on exclusive Right of Way (RoW) along the railway track. The company provides broadband telecom and multimedia network across the country.

The company has fixed a price band of Rs 93-94 a share for its initial share-sale.

The IPO is entirely an offer-for-sale (OFS) through which government will offload 87,153,369 equity shares or a 27.16% stake.

Half of the issue is reserved for qualified institutional buyers, 35% for retail investors, and 15% for non-institutional bidders.

The last railway IPO that hit the street of IRFC had a weak market debut. But grey market trends suggest investors are betting big on the RailTel IPO.

The premium on the unlisted shares of RailTel had surged to Rs 44-47 in the grey market last week, the unofficial market for trading in unlisted shares. That translated into a 50% bump up on the IPO price of Rs 93-94 per share.

How the IPO sails through remains to be seen. Meanwhile, we will keep you updated on the latest developments in this space.

Moving on to stock-specific news...

Dr Reddy's Laboratories was among the top buzzing stocks today.

Dr Reddy's Laboratories said it has launched cancer treatment drug Capecitabine tablets in the US market.

The product is a therapeutic equivalent generic version of Xeloda (capecitabine) tablets approved by the US Food and Drug Administration (USFDA).

In a regulatory filing, Dr Reddy's laboratories announced the launch of Capecitabine tablets in the US.

Quoting IQVIA Health data, Dr Reddy's said the Xeloda brand and generic had US sales of approximately US$ 90 million for the most recent 12 months ending in October 2020. Dr Reddy's Capecitabine Tablets, USP are available in 150 mg and 500 mg strengths in bottle count sizes of 60 and 120, respectively.

Speaking of the stock, here's interesting data on Dr. Reddy's Lab...

Investing just Rs 100,000 in Dr. Reddy's Labs in 1992, would have given a whopping Rs 4.89 crores in 2014!