Markets End in Green

The markets have begun the week on a sound footing, leaving behind an eventless session on Friday and the choppiness that underlined the trading activity through last week. The Sensex ended at 19,151, higher by 143 points and the Nifty shut shop at 5743, up 46 points. On the broader market front, the midcap index ended at 7251, higher by 59 points and the small cap index ended at 9016, up 69 points. The banking space hogged the limelight on the back of SBI's stellar Q3 performance and ahead of RBI's quarterly monetary policy meet scheduled on Tuesday, which is widely expected to affect a 25-bps rate hike in an attempt to tame the spiraling inflation rates. On the global front, Asian stocks had a mixed session on mild bargain buying after a sell-off last week. The key benchmark indices in Hong Kong, Indonesia, China, and Taiwan ended down by upto a percent each, while the South Korea, Singaporean and Japanese markets ended with gains of around a half a percent each. And the European markets were marginally negative in mid-day trading ahead of the US Fed Reserve meeting on Tuesday. Wall Street had closed mixed on Friday; the Dow had gained 49 points, while the Nasdaq dropped 14 points.