Sensex, Nifty Choppy; Reliance Industries, ITC Gain, HUL, TCS Fall

The S&P BSE Sensex and NSE Nifty 50 indexes were trading n a choppy manner as gains in Reliance Industries, ITC, Bajaj Finance, Infosys and Power Grid were offset with losses in Tata Consultancy Services, Hindustan Unilever, Larsen & Toubro and ICICI Bank. Analysts said that the benchmarks are likely to remain choppy in today's session as futures and option contracts of index futures go in for weekly expiry. The Sensex rose as much as 136 points and the Nifty 50 index touched an intraday high of 9,927.70 and low of 9,845.05.

As of 11:00 am, the Sensex was up 28 points at 33,525 and Nifty was at 9,895, up 14 points.

Investors and traders were on sidelines over escalating border tensions between India and China and a spike in coronavirus cases.

Meanwhile, credit ratings agency Fitch said it had revised its outlook on India to "negative" from "stable", and affirmed the rating at "BBB-" - the lowest investment grade. The coronavirus pandemic has significantly weakened India's growth outlook for this year and exposed the challenges associated with a high public-debt burden, Fitch said.

Eight of 11 sector gauges compiled by the National Stock Exchange were trading higher led by the Nifty Media index's over 1 per cent gain. Nifty PSU Bank and Metal indexes also rose 0.7 and 0.8 per cent each respectively.

On the other hand, IT shares were witnessing a slight selling pressure.

Mid- and small-cap shares were outperforming their larger peers as Nifty Micap 100 index rose 0.54 per cent and Nifty Smallcap 100 index advanced 0.9 per cent.

Zee Entertainment was top Nifty gainer, the stock rose 4 per cent to Rs 171. Bajaj Finserv, Bajaj Finance, Vedanta, Bharti Infratel, Power Grid, Coal India, ITC and UPL were also among the gainers.

On the flipside, ONGC, Adani Ports, TCS, Shree Cements, Larsen & Toubro, HCL Technologies, Nestle India, Hindustan Unilever, Maruti Suzuki and Tech Mahindra were among the losers.

The overall market breadth was positive as 1,457 shares were advancing while 676 were declining on the BSE.