Sensex, Nifty Off Day's Highs; Auto, IT Stocks Gain, Banks Fall

The S&P BSE Sensex fell as much as 576 points from day's highest level and the Nifty 50 index came below important psychological level of 9,300 in afternoon trading as markets came off intraday highs. Gains in auto, information technology and energy shares were offset with losses in banking and financial services shares.

As of 2:27 pm, the Sensex was up 132 points or 0.4 per cent at 31,775 and the Nifty was at 9,286, up 35 points or 0.4 per cent.

Six of 11 sector gauges compiled by the National Stock Exchange were trading higher led by the Nifty Auto index's over 5 per cent gain. IT, media and metal indexes also rose between 1.75-2.4 per cent.

On the other hand, Nifty Private Bank index was top loser, down 1.3 per cent. Nifty Bank and Financial Services sector gauges also fell over a per cent each.

Mid- and small-cap shares were trading on a mixed note as the Nifty Midcap 100 index rose 0.9 per cent while the Nifty Smallcap 100 index was trading flat.

Tata Motors was top gainer in the Nifty 50 basket of shares, the stock rose 8 per cent to Rs 88. Bajaj Auto, Hero MotoCorp, Maruti Suzuki, Grasim Industries, Eicher Motors, JSW Steel and Zee Entertainment were also among the gainers.

On the flipside, ICICI Bank was top loser, the stock fell 4.5 per cent to Rs 322 after it reported a 26 per cent jump in net profit at Rs 1,221.36 crore for the quarter ended March 2020.

Dr. Reddy's Labs, Bharat Petroleum, Kotak Mahindra Bank, IndusInd Bank, HDFC, Tech Mahindra, Hindustan Unilever, Bajaj Finance and Cipla were also among the losers.

The overall market breadth was neutral as 1,112 shares were trading higher while 1,163 were trading higher on the BSE.