Nifty hovers around 8,800; Infrastructure stocks gain

Infrastructure stocks gained after the Cabinet announced changes to arbitration norms

Markets turned choppy in late noon trades after a bout of profit booking intra-day with infrastructure stocks gaining the most after the Cabinet toward annouced changes in arbitration norms in an effort to re-start stalled projects.

At 2PM, the S&P BSE Sensex was up 169 points at  28,512 and the Nifty50 was up 69 points at 8,814. In the broader market, the BSE Midcap and Smallcap indices were up 0.5%-0.8% each.

Foreign institutional investors were net buyers in equities worth Rs 391 crore on Tuesday, as per provisional stock exchange data.

European shares were trading mixed after weakness in early trades. Germany's DAX was trading flat with negative bias while FTSE and CAC-40 were trading with marginal gains.

Tata Motors extended gains and was up over 2.5% post its June quarter results. The auto major reported better-than-expected revenues with 9% growth in consolidated net income and JLR revenue for the June 2016 quarter.

Among other auto shares, Maruti Suzuki and M&M were up 0.5% while in the two-wheeler space Hero MotoCorp gained 2% and Bajaj Auto gained nearly 1%.

Financials continued to trade firm with private lenders among the top gainers. ICICI Bank and HDFC Bank were up 1%-1.5% each.

IT majors pared early losses amid renewed buying interest. Infosys and Wipro were up 0.5%-1% each.

UltraTech Cement was up nearly 4% after the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) allowed foreign investors to invest up to 30% in the cement major.

In the infrastructure space, HCC was up 20% at Rs 27.50, NCC was up 3.5% and IL&FS Engineering was up over 3%