Sensex, Nifty Witness Choppy Trade

The Indian benchmark equities Sensex and Nifty opened marginally lower in the early morning trade. The 30-share Sensex was down by 30 points at 26241 and 50-share Nifty was seen trading flat at 7894. The investors are being cautious ahead of the quarterly results in September. The broader markets were also trading in the negative zone. The BSE mid-cap and small-cap indices were down by 0.15% and 0.05% respectively. The overall market breadth on BSE was positive as 1002 shares advanced and 870 shares declined.

Tracking the momentum of sectoral indices, BSE Capital Goods was the top sectoral gainer, up by 1.14%. However BSE IT was seen trading down by 2.60%. Among the gainers, BHEL and ONGC were trading up by 1.49% and 1.25% respectively. NBCC was trading up by 3% after the company received construction order worth Rs 338 crore from IIT Kanpur. L&T was trading up by 1.78% after the company signed contract with UP government worth Rs 1600 crore. However, the pharma stocks were under pressure today. Sun Pharma, Cipla, DrReddy Labs were seen trading down by 2%, 2.72% and 2.69% respectively.

Further a mixed trend was seen in the Asian markets. China's Shanghai was up by 0.27%. However, Japan's Nikkei and Hong Kong's Hang Seng was seen trading in a negative zone, down by 1.11% and 0.75% respectively.