Mumbai: Equity benchmark indices were in the negative terrain during early hours on Friday amid persistent global concerns over the US-China trade deal.
At 10:15 am, the BSE S&P Sensex was down by 112 points at 40,463 while the Nifty 50 slipped by 32 points to 11,936. Sectoral indices at the National Stock Exchange were mixed with Nifty IT dropping by 2.1 percent.
Software major Infosys tumbled by 2.78 percent to Rs 693.40 per share while Wipro and Tech Mahindra were down by 1.9 percent each, HCL Technologies by 1.8 percent and Tata Consultancy Services by 1.7 percent.
The other losers were Bharti Infratel, Bharti Airtel, Cipla, UPL and Titan.
However, NTPC gained by 2.6 percent at Rs 118.35 per share after Morgan Stanley upgraded the power utility major to ‘overweight’ from ‘equal weight’ earlier with a target price of Rs 152.
Index heavyweight Reliance Industries also added gains of 1.7 percent while the other gainers included Power Grid Corporation, Zee Entertainment, Sun Pharma, ITC, Vedanta and Tata Steel.
Meanwhile, Asian equities posted mild gains amid persistent worries over the status of trade negotiations between China and the United States.
MSCI’s broadest index of Asia Pacific shares outside Japan climbed by 0.12 percent on worries that the US legislation on Hong Kong threatens to undermine trade talks between the world’s two largest economies.
Chinese blue-chip shares were down by 0.82 percent but Japan’s Nikkei was up by 0.43 percent.