The two key equity benchmarks, Sensex and Nifty, which rose during early trade on Monday, oscillated between gains and losses amid high volatility.
At 10.30 am, the BSE Sensex was marginally down 81 points at 51,279, while the broader NSE Nifty was trading at 15,259, down 34 points.
On the 30-share Sensex platform, Tata Steel was the top loser, down 4.43 per cent. L&T, RIL, NTPC, TechM, IndusInd were the other prime losers. On the other hand, HUL was the top gainer, up 3.21 per cent. HDFC, UltraCemco, HDFC Bank, Nestle, Wipro, Asian Paint were trading marginally higher.
In the broader markets, benchmarks were underperforming. The BSE Midcap and Smallcap indices slipped up to 1.6 per cent.
Sectorwise, metals, realty, oil & gas indices on the Nifty slumped 0.7-2 per cent. While, Nifty IT, financials and pharma were higher.
On NSE, nine out of the 15 sector gauges were trading in the green. Sub-indexes Nifty Bank and Nifty IT were outperforming the NSE platform by rising as much as 0.54 per cent and 0.54 per cent, respectively.
However, the overall market breadth was slightly weak as 1,047 shares were advancing while 1,366 were declining on BSE.
In the previous session on Friday, Sensex had declined 135 points (0.26 per cent) to settle at an over one-year low of 51,360, while Nifty had lost 67 points (0.44 per cent) to end at 15,293.
Meanwhile, the rupee strengthened by 12 paise to 77.93 against the US dollar in opening trade on Monday as easing crude oil prices supported the local unit.
However, unabated foreign fund outflows, a lacklustre trend in domestic equities and strong American dollar overseas restricted the gain, forex dealers said.
Global oil benchmark Brent crude futures slipped 0.26 per cent to $112.83 per barrel.
Foreign institutional investors were net sellers in the capital market on Friday as they offloaded shares worth Rs 7,818.61 crore, as per exchange data.