Markets End on a Flat Note

The markets took a pause after an interrupted run in the last eight trading sessions. The Sensex traded in a narrow range of around 150 points through the day before ending at 19,420, lower by 24 points and the Nifty shut shop at 5826, down seven points. In a reversal of recent trend, the broader markets outshone their larger counterparts; the midcap index ended at 6982, higher by 109 points and the smallcap index ended at 8358, up 182 points. The benchmark indices surged by as much as 9% during the past week till Thursday to post their highest returns in 21 months, buoyed by the upbeat sentiment on the global market front. Strong rollovers during the March derivatives expiry on Thursday are indicative of the bullishness on Dalal Street; the market wide rollovers stood at 81%, while rollovers in Nifty futures was at 71% and Bank Nifty futures rollovers were at 76%. Banking and IT indices witnessed profit-booking on the BSE post the gains of the recent past. SBI slid by 1.7% at Rs 2719 and ICICI Bank weakened by 0.9% at Rs 1102. And in the IT space, Infosys edged lower by 0.5% at Rs 3218, Wipro was down 0.5% at Rs 475 and TCS slumped by 0.2% at Rs 1129 despite receiving a multi-year, multi-million dollar contract to provide application support, maintenance and development services to the US-based Air Liquide. Index heavyweight RIL slid 1.1% at Rs 1035. On the other hand, Reliance Communication spurted by 3.6% at Rs 111, Jaiprakash Associates advanced by 3% at Rs 95 and BHEL gained 2.5% at Rs 2113. And Tata Steel rose 0.8% at Rs 625 after taking Tinplate on board as its subsidiary by hiking its stake in the later from 42.88% to 59.45%. The market breadth was positive. Out of 2956 stocks traded on the BSE, there were 2159 advancing stocks as against 688 declines.