The Bombay Stock Exchange benchmark Sensex slipped into red at noon on Monday on persistent selling in metal shares from investors. Though global cues were more or less supportive in trade, marketmen have turned cautious about the valuations and they are looking to book profit at every high.

Technology and software counters were receiving good response from market participants at this point of time. Among front liners, Bharti Airtel, Infosys Technologies and Reliance Communications were favoured by investors while Hindalco Industries, Sterlite Industries and Tata Steel were battered in trade.

At 12:47pm, the 30-share BSE Sensex declined 31.44 points to 17070.10. The 50-share was down by 13.95 points at 5094.95 from its previous close of

Among the BSE sectoral indices the main gainers were technology up 1.09%, information technology up 1.03%, capital goods up 0.22%, FMCG (FMCG) up 0.18% and auto up 0.17%.

On the other hand, metal down 2.17%, oil & gas down 0.50%, public sector undertaking down 0.21%, consumer durables down 0.20% and healthcare down 0.14% were the main losers in the BSE sectoral space.

Bharti Airtel up 2.45%, Infosys Technologies up 1.23%, RCom up 0.89%, Tata Motors up 0.84% and TCS up 0.83% were the major gainers on the Sensex.

Hindalco Industries down 4.01 %, Sterlite Industries down 3.01%, Tata Steel down 2.21%, Jaiprakash Associates down 0.90% and Maruti Suzuki down 0.89% were the major losers on the Sensex.

Among Asian markets, Nikkei added 1.49%, while on the other hand declined 0.15% and Hang Seng dipped 0.62%.