Mumbai: Equity benchmark indices see-sawed between gains and losses during early hours on Monday while Asian markets were flat due to weak volumes ahead of the Christmas holiday break.
At 10:15 am, the BSE S&P Sensex was down by 38 points to 41,643 while the Nifty 50 was up by 3 points at 12,277. Most sectoral indices at the National Stock Exchange were in the green except for Nifty PSU bank. Nifty metal and media gained by 0.7 percent each.
Among stocks, index heavyweight Reliance Industries slipped by 2.08 percent to trade at Rs 1,565.80 per share. The others in the negative zone included Coal India, Nestle India, HDFC Bank, and Adani Ports.
However, UPL was up by 2.7 percent, Zee Entertainment by 2.5 percent, Bharat Petroleum Corporation by 1.9 percent, JSW Steel and Vedanta by 1.6 percent each.
Meanwhile, Asian stock markets were steady on trade optimism between the United States and China. Reports said US President Donald Trump had a good talk with China’s leader Xi Jinping about phase one of the trade deal they struck recently.
But volumes weakened ahead of the Christmas holiday break and investors squared off their positions. MSCI’s broadest index of Asia Pacific shares outside Japan was steady after rising 1.4 percent last week.
Japan’s Nikkei climbed by 0.1 percent but South Korea’s market was a shade weaker after adding 5.5 percent so far in December.