New Delhi, Jul 9 (IANS): India's key equity markets opened in the red on Friday as negative global cues subdued investors' sentiments.

Accordingly, market watchers cited that weak global cues continued to trigger profit booking.

Consequently, the S&P BSE Sensex traded at 52,337.13 points around 9.55 a.m. lower by 231.81 points, or 0.44 per cent, from its previous close.

Similarly, the Nifty50 on the National Stock Exchange closed at 15,669.85, lower by 58.05 points, or 0.37 per cent, from its previous close.

"After showing sharp weakness on Thursday, Nifty has slipped into follow-through weakness at the opening on Friday taking cues from its Asian counterparts. Metal stocks are seeing some buying in the morning while Bank stocks are facing some selling pressure," said Deepak Jasani- Head of Retail Research at HDFC Securities.

"Nifty needs to stay above 15635, the intra day low so far, for the Nifty to try to recover; else a sharper fall could ensue."

According to Gaurav Garg, Head of Research at CapitalVia Global Research: "As expected the markets opened negative fueled by profit booking yesterday which was intensified in the second half of the session as well as weakness in the global market with Dow Jones closing 0.75 per cent down."

"Today, we expect the market to trade with a negative bias with Nifty50 having a major support at 15600 and BankNifty at 34900. If both these levels are respected, we might see some recovery coming in in the second half of the session."