The S&P BSE Sensex and NSE Nifty 50 indexes held on to gains in noon deals on the back of buying in banking and financial services shares. However, profit taking in recent outperforming information technology, FMCG and pharma shares led to benchmarks coming off intraday highs. Earlier in the day, Sensex rose as much as 468 points and the Nifty 50 index touched an intraday high of 13,739.15. Market analysts expect volatility in the session as weekly index futures and option contracts are set to expire later in the day.
As of 12:05 pm, the Sensex was up 238 points at 46,682 and Nifty rose 74 points to 13,675.
Eight of 11 sector gauges compiled by the National Stock Exchange were trading higher led by the Nifty Bank index's 1.6 per cent gain. Nifty Financial Services, Metal, Private Bank and PSU Bank indexes also rose over a per cent each.
On the other hand, IT, Pharma and FMCG indexes were trading lower.
Mid- and small-cap shares were trading mixed as Nifty Midcap 100 index rose 0.3 per cent and Nifty Smallcap 100 index advanced nearly 1 per cent.
Shares in biscuit maker Mrs Bectors Food Specialities Ltd more than doubled in their market debut on Thursday, in a latest sign of strong investor appetite for the country's food sector amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
The initial public offering (IPO), which was nearly 200 times oversubscribed, comes days after Burger King India - a company to which Mrs Bectors sells buns - also enjoyed a strong stock market debut.
Tata Motors was top Nifty gainer, the stock rose 5 per cent to Rs 177. ONGC, Axis Bank, Indian Oil, SBI Life, Bajaj Auto, GAIL India, HDFC Life, Bharti Airtel and State Bank of India also rose between 1.65-4 per cent each.
On the flipside, Infosys, Nestle India, Shree Cements, Tech Mahindra, Wipro, Dr Reddy's Labs, Mahindra & Mahindra, HCL Technologies and Grasim Industries were fell between 0.7-1.6 per cent.
The overall market breadth was positive as 1,579 shares were trading higher while 1,152 were declining on the BSE.
