After slipping into the red zone and hitting the day's low, Indian equities have staged a smart recovery during noon trades. The NSE Nifty continued to hover around the 4,250 levels.

At 1:24 p. m., Sensex stood at 14,279 after gaining 23 points, while the broad-based Nifty remained flat at 4,239.

The market sentiment got a boost following strong signals from the European markets. The FTSE index in UK was trading up by 0.2%, DAX index in Germany gained 0.3% and the CAC index in France surged 0.3%

Among the 30-components of Sensex, 18 stocks remained positive and 16 went down.

The top gainers in the list were RIL, Bharti Airtel, L&T, HDFC and ITC. In contrast, the top losers list contained L&T, HDFC, Sterlite and SBI.

Shares of Bajaj Auto have rallied by more than 8% after the company declared its first quarter results. The company's net profit zoomed 67.4% YoY at Rs 2.93 billion, while net sales went up by 1.8% to Rs 22.6 billion.

After opening at Rs1115, the scrip hit an intra-day high of Rs1211 and an intra day low of Rs1110. The total volume of the shares traded stood at 0.3 million shares.

Shares of Opto Circuit also gained more than 10% to trade at Rs166 prior to the announcement of the quarterly earnings.

The scrip opened the day at Rs159 and touched an intra-day high of Rs167 and a low of Rs155.

NTPC has decided to place equipment orders for plants producing a combined 7,260MW by September this year, Chairman R. S. Sharma said.

Moreover, NTPC plans to order 11 power units of 660MW each.

The company also plans to import 12.5mn tons of coal in the existing fiscal and has imported 3.5mn tons on coal thus far. Further NTPC would be requiring 150mn tons of coal in FY10.