New Delhi, August 20 (HS): Domestic equities opened on a cautious note this morning, moving within a narrow range as bulls and bears locked horns in the opening trades. Both benchmarks — the Sensex and Nifty — oscillated between mild gains and losses in early action, before settling slightly higher after the first hour of trade.

At 10:15 AM, the Sensex was up 46.63 points or 0.06% at 81,691.02, while the Nifty inched up a marginal 3.45 points or 0.01%, quoting at 24,984.10.

In sectoral and stock-specific action, heavyweights like Infosys, Bharti Airtel, Hindustan Unilever, Eternals, and NTPC were among the top gainers, rising between 1.33% and 1.77%. On the flip side, Shriram Finance, Bajaj Finance, Bharat Electronics, Hindalco Industries, and Tata Motors weighed on the indices with losses ranging from 1.01% to 1.46%.

The broader market breadth was positive — out of 2,583 actively traded stocks, 1,465 were in the green while 1,073 slipped into the red. Within the Sensex basket of 30, 11 stocks were trading higher against 19 in the red. The Nifty pack reflected similar sentiment, with 19 gainers and 31 losers.

On opening, the Sensex ticked up 27.08 points at 81,671.47, before slipping to a low of 81,494.50 on profit-taking. Buying support helped it rebound into positive territory soon after. The Nifty, however, opened in the red at 24,965.80, slid to 24,929.70, but managed to reclaim 24,991.65 at the day’s early high.

In the previous session on Tuesday, the Sensex had settled 370.64 points, or 0.46%, higher at 81,644.39, while the Nifty closed at 24,980.65, up 103.70 points or 0.42%.

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Hindusthan Samachar / Jun Sarkar