Majority of Asian stock indices are lower today as Japanese and Hong Kong shares fall. The Nikkei 225 is off 0.61% while the Hang Seng is down 0.49%. The Shanghai Composite is trading up by 0.06%. US stocks displayed a lackluster performance on Monday with the S&P 500 and Nasdaq ending with nominal gains and the Dow slipping in the negative terrain.

Back home, share markets in India have opened the day on a negative note. The BSE Sensex is trading lower by 130 points while the NSE Nifty is trading lower by 44 points. The BSE Mid Cap and BSE Small Cap index both opened the day up by 0.2%.

Barring oil & gas stocks, all sectoral indices have opened the day in red with stocks from power sector and capital goods sector leading the losses. The rupee is trading at 63.87 to the US$.

Power stocks opened the day on a mixed note with NTPC and Tata Power witnessing maximum selling pressure. In the latest development, the government will sell 5% stake in National Thermal Power Corporation (NTPC) at Rs 168 per share to raise about Rs 70 billion.

The share sale through an offer for sale (OFS) will happen over two days beginning from today. In the base offer to sell a 5% stake, it will sell up to 412.3 million shares, and an equal number of shares as part of the oversubscription option.

One must note that, the government has so far this fiscal raised over Rs 88 billion through disinvestment in six companies, including selling stake in L&T through Specified Undertaking of Unit Trust of India (SUUTI), and one share buyback.

After three years of underachieving its disinvestment targets, the government is back with a bang. This time, it wants to focus on strategic stake sales of non-public sector units (PSUs) and areas where disinvestment has so far been poor. FY15-16 saw no disinvestment through this route.