Stock markets got off to a shaky start in the week with both benchmark indices trading sharply in the red on Monday owing to poor performance by bank, realty, power and capital goods sectors.
At 2.05 p.m., the Sensex was down 254 points at 17,107 while the Nifty was 80 points lower at 5,197.
All the BSE sectoral indices were in the red. Realty, Bankex and Power led the decline with losses of over 3 per cent.
Among the Sensex 30, ICICI Bank, Infosys and RIL were the top laggards. Wipro and HUL bucked the negative trend.
Sensex opened at 17,377, up 16 points, from its previous close but turned negative soon after while Nifty opened down 4 points from its previous close at 5,274. By the end of the first hour of trading both indices were down by over one per cent.
