The S&P BSE Sensex and NSE Nifty 50 indexes came off intraday highs to close on a positive note in trade on Monday led by gains in Reliance Industries, Infosys, Hindustan Unilever, Bharti Airtel, ITC and HCL Technologies. The benchmarks staged a gap up opening wherein the Sensex rose as much as 430 points and Nifty touched an intraday high of 10,894. However, losses in banking and financial services shares like HDFC Bank, HDFC, ICICI Bank and Bajaj Finance led to the benchmarks come off intraday highs in noon trading.
The Sensex rose 99 points to close at 36,694 and Nifty advanced 47 points to close at 10,815.
India registered more than 28,000 new coronavirus cases for the second consecutive day, taking its tally to over 8.78 lakh infections, the Union Health Ministry said this morning. The jump in the new patients in the last 24 hours - 28,701 cases - is the country's biggest single-day surge since the beginning of the pandemic.
Six of 11 sector gauges compiled by the National Stock Exchange ended higher led by the Nifty Information Technology index's nearly 2 per cent gain. Metal, FMCG, auto and energy shares also witnessed buying interest.
On the other hand, banking, financial services, realty and PSU banking indexes declined over a per cent each.
Mid- and small-cap shares traded on a muted note ad Nifty Midcap 100 index declined 0.2 per cent while Nifty Smallcap 100 index ended on a flat note.
Reliance Industries rose more than 3 per cent to hit new record high of 1,947 per share after Jio Platforms bagged an investment from Qualcomm Ventures.
Tech Mahindra was top Nifty gainer, the stock rose 5.5 per cent to close at Rs 600. Hindalco, Tech Mahindra, JSW Steel, Wipro, Bharti Airtel, Zee Entertainment, Britannia Industries and Vedanta also rose between 2-4 per cent.
On the flipside, Power Grid, Bajaj Finance, HDFC Bank, HDFC, ICICI Bank, State Bank of India, GAIL, Kotak Mahindra Bank and NTPC were among the losers.
The overall market breadth was negative as 1,578 shares ended lower while 1,118 closed lower on the BSE.
