Day Ends In Positives, Bharti Zooms Back Up

On account of the RBI's mid quarter monetary policy review, the Indian markets saw a highly volatile trading day. While they were trading higher in the early part of the day, the indices turned negative post the RBI's announcement, only to recover later and close comfortably in the positive territory. The Sensex and Nifty both moved higher by more than 0.6%.

With the central bank maintaining status quo on the key rates, the repo, reverse repo and CRR were left unchanged at 8%, 7% and 4.25% respectively. Later, the markets went back up over speculations of a rate cut in the March quarter of 2013.

The European indices are trading higher, with FTSE, CAC and DAX up in the range of 0.2%-0.6%. According to Bloomberg reports, European stocks rose for the first time in four days amid optimism that the US lawmakers will agree on a budget.

Dow Jones Futures is currently trading 132.50 points or 1.01% up at 13285, indicating a positive sentiment in the US markets.

Back home, Bharti Airtel was the leading index gainer. The stock was up 4.23% at Rs 313.15 per share. Some buying was seen as the stock was beaten down heavily over the past few trading sessions. Metals stocks fared well, with Tata Steel, Sterlite Industries, Hindalco and Jindal Steel closing higher.

Other stocks like ITC, Infosys, Coal India, HUL, TCS and ICICI Bank were among those marginally in the green zone.

Maruti Suzuki saw the most fall among the index stocks, down 1.64% to Rs 1474.80 per share by day's end. ONGC, Dr Reddy's Labs, Bajaj Auto, RIL and HDFC Bank closed in the negatives.

The market breadth was almost positive. Out of the 3073 stocks traded on the BSE, 1682 advanced, 1255 declined and 136 remained unchanged.

In such an environment, we would advise investors to play with caution.