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Indian shares were muted on Tuesday, weighed by a pullback in information technology stocks after a recent rally, and tracking Asian peers ahead of key economic data from China.

The blue-chip NSE Nifty 50 shed 0.01% to 22,094.55 points, while the S&P BSE Sensex lost 0.03% to 73,310.01, as of 9:57 a.m. IST.

IT stocks took a breather, shedding 0.90%, after jumping 7.1% in the last two sessions on the back of better-than-expected results from the top four software companies.

HCLTech, Wipro, Tech Mahindra, and LTIMindtree were the top four Nifty 50 losers, dropping between 1% and 2.5%.

Financials were muted, ahead of the results of top private lender and the highest weighted stock in Nifty 50 - HDFC Bank, due later in the day.

The benchmarks Nifty 50 and Sensex breached 22,000 and 73,000 levels, respectively, for the first time on Monday.

The Nifty 50 had gained 2.72% in the previous five sessions and hit new all-time highs in the last two.

"The rally from now on will not be smooth and sharp corrections are likely since valuations are high," said VK Vijayakumar, chief investment strategist at Geojit Financial Services.

Analysts expect earnings season to influence the market's trajectory over the next two weeks ahead of the central government's budget, which is due on Feb. 1.

Among individual stocks, National Aluminium Company and Hindustan Copper climbed 4.6% and 3.2%, respectively, after a state-owned joint venture KABIL signed an agreement with Argentina's CAMYEN SE for lithium exploration and mining.

Hospital chain Aster DM Healthcare surged 12.4% to a record high after announcing plans to consider dividend of 110 rupees-120 rupees per share to shareholders from its Gulf business demerger.

Asian markets fell ahead of quarterly gross domestic product data from China, due on Wednesday. [MKTS/GLOB]

(Reporting by Bharath Rajeswaran in