Nifty Bank, Financial Services and Private Bank indexes were trading with a negative bias.
The S&P BSE Sensex and NSE Nifty 50 indexes came off intraday highs in the noon deals on the back of selling pressure in banking and financial services shares. The benchmarks staged a gap up opening wherein the Sensex rose over 400 points and Nifty 50 index moved above its important psychological level of 14,900. As of 12:17 pm, the Sensex was up 211 points or 0.42 per cent at 50,061 and Nifty 50 index was up 82 points or 0.5 per cent at 14,843.
Infosys, Tata Consultancy Services, Mahindra & Mahindra and ITC were top movers in the Sensex while HDFC, ICICI Bank, Reliance Industries, ONGC and Kotak Mahindra Bank were top drags.
Eight of 11 sector gauges compiled by the National Stock Exchange were trading higher led by the Nifty Auto and IT indexes’ nearly 2 per cent gain. Pharma, metal and media indexes were also trading higher.
On the other hand, Nifty Bank, Financial Services and Private Bank indexes were trading with a negative bias.
Mid- and small-cap stocks were witnessing buying interest as Nifty Midcap 100 index rose 0.9 per cent and Nifty Smallcap 100 index advanced 0.55 per cent.
Bharat Petroleum rose as much as 6 per cent to hit an intraday high of Rs 482.40 after its board of directors approved stake sale in Numaligarh Refinery in Assam for consideration of Rs 9,875 crore to a consortium of Oil India, Engineers India and government of Assam.
Mahindra & Mahindra, Wipro, Hero MotoCorp, Tata Motors, Tech Mahindra, Infosys, Grasim Industries, Bajaj Auto, TCS and Indian Oil also rose between 1.74-3.95 per cent.
On the flipside, ONGC, HDFC, UPL, Dr Reddy’s Labs, Power grid, Shree Cements, Hindalco and Coal India were among the notable losers.
The overall market breadth was positive as 1,617 shares were advancing while 1,148 were declining on the BSE.