Sensex, Nifty Open Lower As Oil Prices Surge On Middle East Tensions
(RTTNews) - Indian shares opened a tad lower on Tuesday after oil prices gained over 3 percent the previous day on heightened Middle East tensions, with the United States saying it's preparing for significant attacks by Iran or its proxies against Israel as soon as this week.
The benchmark S&P/BSE Sensex was down 74 points, or 0.1 percent, at 79,574 in early trade while the broader NSE Nifty index was down 13 points at 24,334.
HDFC Bank fell 2.3 percent. The weightage of the private sector lender in the Global Standard index will be raised in two tranches, MSCI said.
SBI Life, Tata Motors, HDFC Life and BPCL were down 1-2 percent.
Vodafone Idea dropped 1.4 percent despite narrowing its quarterly net loss.
IRFC gained nearly 2 percent on reporting a marginal rise in its Q1 net profit.
Bharti Airtel rose about 1 percent. Bharti Enterprises' latest investment in British firm British Telecom does not involve Airtel, said Chairperson Sunil Bharti Mittal in an interview.
Cipla, Apollo Hospitals Enterprise and Hero MotoCorp all rose over 1 percent.
Bajaj Finance and Bajaj FinServ were subdued after the RBI issued revised regulations for non-banking finance companies and housing finance companies.