The Indian equity benchmarks came off intraday highs in noon deals owing to weakness in heavyweights like Reliance Industries, HDFC Bank, ICICI Bank, Kotak Mahindra Bank and ITC ahead of expiry of weekly index futures and option contracts. Earlier in the day, Sensex rose as much as 405 points and Nifty 50 index touched an intraday high of 15,218. Buying in information technology shares like Infosys, TCS and HCL Tech were providing support to the benchmarks.
As of 12:29 pm, the Sensex was up 138 points at 51,164 and Nifty rose 32 points to 15,130.
Six of 11 sector gauges compiled by the National Stock Exchange were trading higher led by the Nifty IT index’s 1.5 per cent gain. Nifty Realty, Pharma and Auto indexes also rose between 0.5-0.8 per cent.
On the other hand, banking, financial services, metal and energy shares were witnessing selling pressure.
Mid- and small-cap shares were in-line with their larger peers as Nifty Midcap 100 and Nifty Smallcap 100 indices rose 0.3 and 0.6 per cent each respectively.
Eicher Motors was top Nifty gainer, the stock rose 2.6 per cent to Rs 2,659. Tech Mahindra, Wipro, Tata Motors, HCL Technologies, IndusInd Bank, Bajaj Finance, JSW Steel and Hindustan Unilever also rose 1-2 per cent.
On the flipside, ONGC, SBI Life, HDFC Life, UPL, Indian Oil, Coal India, GAIL India, ITC, Kotak Mahindra Bank and Reliance Industries were among the losers.
The overall market breadth was 1,475 shares were advancing while 1,287 were trading lower on the BSE.