Sensex edges higher, Nifty above 8,650 after Bharti Airtel spikes 12%

The benchmark indices pared all losses to edge higher thanks to over 13% rise in index heavyweight Bharti Airtel even as the broader sentiment remained cautious ahead of the Union Budget 2017.

At 01:41 pm, the S&P BSE Sensex was trading at 27,932, up 50 points, while the broader Nifty50 was ruling at 8,656, up 15 points.

In the broader market, the BSE Midcap index bucked the trend to gain 0.3%, while BSE Smallcap was little changed.

The market breadth, indicating the overall health of the market, was negative. On BSE, 1,283 shares fell and 1,189 shares rose. A total of 203 shares were unchanged.

Telecom stocks hogged limelight with telecom index soaring as much as 9.5% as investors remained optimistic on the sector after Vodafone reportedly confirmed that it is in discussions with the Aditya Birla Group about an all share merger of Vodafone India (excluding Vodafone's 42% stake in Indus Towers) and Idea Cellular.

Idea Cellular gained 29% to Rs 100 in intra-day trade. The share price of the company has risen 44% since January 18.

Bharti Airtel, RCom, TTML also gained 12.26%, 9.87% and 7.13% respectively.

Bharat Electronics hit a new high of Rs 1,624, up 5.5% in intra-day trade after the company reported 33% year on year (YoY) jump in its net profit at Rs 373 crore for the quarter ended December 2016 (Q3FY17), on back of strong operational income.

The state-owned company posted 37% growth in total income from operations at Rs 2,191 crore on YoY basis.

Among losers, Shares of IT companies declined after Trump introduced immigration curbs adding to fears that his 'America First' policy may prove detrimental for Indian software services firms.

BSE IT index shed nearly 1% to 9779 points, led by losses in Tanla Solutions (down 4%), Intellect Design Arena (down 2%) and Sonata Software (down 2%).

Among largecap IT stocks, Wipro tanked nearly 2% to Rs 457, HCL Tech was down 2% to Rs 829, while Infosys and TCS slipped over 1% each to Rs 930 and Rs 2322, respectively.

Investors also booked profits in recent outperformers: the Nifty bank index, which led gains last week, fell 0.40 percent, dragged down by HDFC Bank Ltd and Kotak Mahindra Bank Ltd. The index had gained 4.72 percent last week.