BSE Sensex, NSE Nifty Hover Between Red And Green; Oil, Auto And IT Shares Worst Hit

India's Bombay Stock Exchange Sensex started on a negative note Friday and was trading in the red in the morning session. However, the 30 share BSE benchmark index and the NSE Nifty extended gains at 1230 IST, but the trading remained choppy and ended flat at 16,230 (provisional), up 8 points from its previous close, and Nifty closed at 4,926 (provisional), up 4 points.

The Sensex was trading with a moderate gain of 7.68 points or 0.05 percent 16,229.41 and the Nifty was at 4,922.00 with 0.01 percent increase at 12.30 p.m. IST.

The Sensex was down 78.53 points or 0.48 percent to 16,143.77 NSE benchmark dropped by 25 points to 4,896.15 on morning trade Friday.

The Sensex traded in the red due to a weaker rupee and fall in Asian stocks weighing in on the Indian rupee and markets.

Oil & gas, auto and IT were the worst performers in the morning session while metal, capital goods, power and banking shares were trading moderately in the green.

The oil and gas index was down by 0.70 percent.

Top Sensex gainers include Steel companies, Tata Steel Sterlite Industries which gained 1.4 percent each and (8.33), India bulls Fin Service. Sun Pharma (1 percent).

The top losers were Reliance Industries (0.8 percent), ONGC (1 percent), HDFC (1 percent), Mahindra & Mahindra (1.67 percent), Tata Motors and Maruti were (1-2 percent).

Software services exporters TCS and Infosys were down by 0.5-0.8 percent.

In the Group A shares, Voltas Ltd gained 8.50 percent, IndiabullsFinService went up by 5.62 percent, Adani Enterprises Ltd was 5.09 percent, Jaiprakash Associates was up by 3.26 percent and Indiabulls Real Estate gained 2.83 percent.

Bharti Airtel with 1.5 percent was the top gainer on the Nifty index. In addition, the company had announced the acquisition of 49 percent stake in Qualcomm India Thursday, NDTV Profit report said.

The rupee too depreciated by 30 paise to 55.95 per dollar Friday after recovering 65 paise from its record low Thursday.

Though markets are attractively valued, people are not buying because the rupee is falling. Unless the rupee recovers to 53-54, large investors are unlikely to come in and buy, Ambareesh Baliga, chief operating officer at Way2Wealth, told NDTV Profit.

The euro zone debt crisis continued to cast its shadow on other Asian markets. Japan's Nikkei index traded flat while Hong Kong's benchmark fell 0.40 percent.

Markets have priced in a very negative scenario for Greece as well as deteriorating growth prospects in the euro zone, but with them very much focused on the tail risk of Greece leaving the euro bloc, the euro remains highly vulnerable, Masafumi Yamamoto, chief FX strategist at Barclays, told Reuters.