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Markets have pared some of its morning losses in the early noon trades as selling in heavyweights like ICICI Bank, Tata Motors and Bharti Airtel weighed on the indices. At 1315 hrs, the Sensex was up 16 points at 19,445 and the Nifty was up marginally by two points at 5,883.
The broader markets underperformed with the midcap index down 0.6% and the smallcap index slipped 0.2%, as compared to the Sensex which was up 0.08%.
The local currency touched 57.69, falling over 1 per cent against the US dollar rising fears that the overseas investors may soon pare their positions in Indian equity markets.
Shares markets across Asia and Europe were mostly under pressure following weak Chinese data, which helped the dollar, bounce further off a two-month low against the yen.
Europe's FTSEurofirst 300 index was down 0.3% in early trade as mining stocks were hit after China reported weakness in trade and industrial output.
That also hit Asian shares outside Japan. The Nikkei index jumped as the dollar rose sharply against the yen after markets took a closer look at Friday's U.S. jobs data, which eased growth concerns while keeping alive speculation of early easing in the Federal Reserve's stimulus.
MSCI's broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan fell 0.35% while the Nikkei rose 4.9%, its biggest one-day gain since March 2011.
Back home, among the sectoral indices, IT and Teck, up 1% and 0.6% were the only indices in green. Meanwhile, Consumer Durables, Realty and Health Care indices were down over 1% each along with Bankex, Auto, Metal, PSU and Power indices which gave off 0.3-0.8%.
The top gainers among the Sensex-30 were HDFC, Wipro, Infosys, NTPC, Hero MotoCorp, Mahindra & Mahindra and Bajaj Auto which gained 0.8-2%.
Among the draggers were Jindal Steel, BHEL, Tata Motors, Bharti Airtel, ICICI Bank, Maruti Suzuki, Sun Pharma and Sterlite losing 1-2%
The market breadth was negative on the BSE. 1,195 stocks advanced while 903 stocks declined.
