The S&P BSE Sensex and NSE Nifty 50 indexes came off intraday highs after a select banking and financial services shares like HDFC, Kotak Mahindra Bank, Bajaj Finance and Bajaj Finserv came under selling pressure. The benchmarks opened higher wherein the Sensex rose as much as 399 points and Nifty hit an intraday high of 10,407.75.Meanwhile, buying in information technology heavyweights TCS and Infosys was holding the markets higher despite investors remaining nervous about rising coronavirus cases and border tensions with China.
As of 11:51 am, the Sensex was up 233 points at 35,075 and Nifty advanced 73 points to 10,362.
"Because of concerns over economic degrowth and rising infections ... sectoral churning is happening with money moving to safety," Saurabh Jain, assistant vice president of research at SMC Global Securities told news agency Reuters.
"Markets are looking at the balance sheet and cash flows. Big IT companies have such balance sheets and can easily adapt to situations."
Six of 11 sector gauges compiled the National Stock Exchange were trading higher led by the Nifty IT index's over 4 per cent gain. Nifty Metal and PSU Bank indexes also rose 1.2 per cent and 0.8 per cent each respectively.
On the other hand, Nifty FMCG index was top loser, down 0.5 per cent.
Mid- and small-cap shares were in line with their larger peers as Nifty Midcap 100 and Nifty Smallcap 100 indexes rose 0.7 per cent each.
Infosys was top Nifty gainer, the stock surged over 6 per cent to Rs 744. Bharat Petroleum, Indian Oil, TCS, Wipro, Zee Entertainment, ONGC, HCL Technologies, Tech Mahindra and Bajaj Auto were also among the gainers.
On the flipside, Kotak Mahindra Bank, Bharti Infratel, ITC, Bajaj Finance, Hindustan Unilever, Sun Pharma, Bajaj Finserv and HDFC were among losers.
