New Delhi: The two key equity benchmarks, Sensex and Nifty, on Tuesday, which opened higher in opening trade, erased their gains and settled in the red tracking loss in the US equity futures.


At 10 am, the 30-share BSE Sensex was down 184 points to 54,122, while the broader NSE Nifty was trading at 16,152, down 62 points.


On the BSE platform, PowerGrid was the top gainer, up 1.98 per cent, followed by M&M, SBI, IndusInd, Dr Reddy, RIL, and others. On the flip side, HUL was the top loser, down 2.68 per cent, followed by Infosys, TechM, Bajaj twins, HCL, L&T, Airtel, TCS, and others.


On NSE, 11 out of the 15 sector gauges were trading in the green. Sub-index Nifty Metal was outperforming the NSE platform by rising as much as 0.90 per cent.


In the previous trading on Monday, Sensex had declined 38 points (0.07 per cent) to close at 54,289, while Nifty had moved 51 points (0.32 per cent) down to settle at 16,215.


Meanwhile, in Asia, markets in Hong Kong, Shanghai, Seoul, and Tokyo were trading lower.


Stock markets in the US had ended higher on Monday.


"Asian stocks fluctuated whereas Wall Street closed with strong gains amid rally in bank stocks," Mohit Nigam, Head - PMS, Hem Securities, told the PTI.


International oil benchmark Brent crude dipped 0.48 per cent to $112.93 per barrel.


Continuing their selling spree, foreign institutional investors (FIIs) offloaded shares worth Rs 1,951.17 crore on Monday, as per stock exchange data.


"There is no distinct trend in this whipsaw market. Daily trading for the near-term is fraught with high risk," V K Vijayakumar, chief investment strategist at Geojit Financial Services, said.