Indian equity benchmarks started Monday's session on a positive note, shrugging off weakness across Asian markets amid thin trade. Buying interest in financial, IT and pharmaceutical shares amid broad-based gains supported Dalal Street.
The S&P BSE Sensex index opened 107.99 points or 0.20 percent higher at 54,385.71 and the broader NSE Nifty50 benchmark began the day at 16,281.35, up 43.15 points or 0.27 percent from its previous close.
The market continued to rise after a day's breather on Friday that came after four straight sessions of gains, helping Sensex and Nifty break a series of records.
At 9:17 am, Sensex traded 215.09 points or 0.40 percent higher at 54,492.81 while Nifty50 was up 47.20 points or 0.29 percent at 16,285.40.
Among blue-chip stocks, Tech Mahindra, HCL Tech, Infosys, Wipro, UltraTech and SBI were the top gainers in early deals, trading between 0.88 percent and 2.30 percent higher.
On the other hand, ONGC, Hindalco and Tata Consumer -- down between 0.41 percetn and 0.90 percent -- were the worst hit among the nine laggards in the Nifty50 universe.
Infosys, HDFC, TCS and Tech Mahindra were the biggest boosts for Sensex in the first few minutes of trade.
Equities in other Asian markets wobbled on Monday amid sharp losses in gold and oil. MSCI’s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan dropped 0.1 percent amid holidays in Tokyo and Singapore. Japan's Nikkei futures traded just below Friday’s close. Nasdaq futures fell 0.5 percent and S&P 500 futures 0.3 percent.
The dollar held near four-month highs after an upbeat US jobs report lifted bond yields.
Sentiment was shaken by a sudden dive in gold as a break of $1,750 triggered stop loss sales taking it as low as $1,684 an ounce . It was last down 2.2 percent at $1,723 per ounce.
Brent sank almost 2 percent on concerns the spread of the Delta variant would temper travel demand.
