Sensex, Nifty trade lower, Infosys shares fall 3%

Meanwhile, India's wholesale inflation eased to an eight-month low of 2.47 percent in March on cheaper food articles, the commerce ministry report showed, helping investors shrug off Infosys's lackluster quarterly results and data showing widening trade deficit in March.

At 2:44 PM, the BSE Sensex was trading at 34,290, up 97 points, while the Nifty50 index was trading at 10,523, up 42 points. Nasdaq and S&P 500 was also down by 0.47 percent and 0.29 percent respectively.

UCO Bank plunged 6.3 percent after the CBI booked its former chairman in connection with an alleged Rs 621-crore loan fraud.

Wholesale inflation was 2.48 per cent in February and 5.11 per cent in March past year.

Among BSE sectoral indices, IT index fell the most by 1.03%, followed by TECk 0.9%, oil & gas 0.6% and consumer durables 0.3%.

The BSE market breadth was bearish with 1,445 declines and 982 advances. However, towards the middle of the session, revival of buying, spread over a broad front, helped wiping out initial losses and touched the day's high of 34,341.46 before settling higher by 112.78 points, or 0.33 per cent, at 34,305.43.

Other major laggards were Wipro, Tata Motors, ONGC, Axis Bank, NTPC, RIL, Dr. Reddy's, SBI, ICICI Bank, Bharti Airtel, Asian Paints, Maruti Suzuki and Tata Steel, falling by up to 1.54 percent.

Infosys, Dewan Housing Finance Corporation, Tata Motors, TCS and Escorts were the top traded individual stock futures contracts in F&O segment of NSE. The historical evidence suggests geopolitical risk as an excellent opportunity "to buy the fear" as near term weakness see long term gains.