Equity markets end flat on low volumes

03 Mar 2012 Evaluate

Special trading session of Indian equity stock markets ended with marginal losses after a positive start. Investors were not very active today as it was not a regular session and they were waiting for cooling off inflation and possible monetary easing. Sensex closed at 17,622, down 14 points from its previous close, and Nifty went home with no major changes. On sectoral front, PSU sector remained in limelight throughout the session along with power and banking stocks, while other gauges lacked much buying interest.  Some stocks from Realty and FMCG dragged the indices down. Meanwhile EIH gained over 8% in today’s trading session as Mukesh Ambani-led Reliance Industries increased its stake in hospitality firm EIH to 18.53% by picking additional 2.13 crore shares worth Rs 192 crore through an open market transaction. HPCL also rallied over 8% on fuel price hike hope‎. However, US crude oil futures fell more than 2%, or $2.14, to settle at $106.70 a barrel a day after hitting a 10-month high above $110 on supply concerns in the Middle East. Election results in five states, including Uttar Pradesh and Punjab, are due to be announced next week. A good showing in the state elections will be a boost for the ruling Congress party and could help revive stalled policy reforms.

Finally BSE Sensex closed at 17,636.99, down by 0.19 points, while the S&P CNX Nifty closed at 5,359.40, down by 0.05 points.

The market breadth on the BSE remained in the favor of advances with 1,374 stocks advancing against 878 declines while 100 remained unchanged. The broader markets outperformed their larger peers in the short session and the BSE Mid cap index closed with gain of 0.22%, while the Small cap index was up by 0.37%

On the BSE Sensex, the top gainers were Tata Power up by 1.09%, Jindal Steel up by 0.52%, Infosys up by 0.45%, Sun Pharma up by 0.41% and HDFC Bank up by 0.33%.

On the other hand Cipla down by 1.00%, Bajaj Auto down by 0.99%, Sterlite Industries down by 0.88%, NTPC down by 0.62% and Bharti Airtel down by 0.61% were the top losers.

The top gaining sectoral indices on the BSE were, PSU up by 0.55%, Power up by 0.35%, IT up by 0.25%, Bankex up by 0.21% and TECk up by 0.16%.

On the flipside the top losing indices were, Realty down by 0.38%, Auto down by 0.16%, Capital Goods (CG) down by 0.15%, FMCG down by 0.07% and Consumer Durables (CD) down by 0.06%.

The S&P CNX Nifty touched a high and low of 5,369.60 and 5,353.40 respectively. There were 19 advances against 30 declines and one remained unchanged on the index.

The top gainers of the Nifty were, RPower up by 5.81%, BPCL up by 2.11%, RInfra up by 1.49%, RCOM up by 1.22% and Jindal Steel up by 0.65%.

On the flip side, Cipla was down by 1.05%, Sterlite Industries was down by 1.05%, Ambuja Cement was down by 1.04%, ACC down by 0.98% and Sesa Goa was down by 0.83%.

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