The Hindu Business Line : Market volatile, gains at close

The markets ended flat on Monday amid volatile trading sessions and traded in negative territory for most part of the day. However, they recovered during the last hour on fund buying and support from IT stocks.

The BSE Sensex gained 1.23 points or 0.01 per cent to close at 13,430.71, while NSE S&P CNX Nifty ended the day at 3,856.15 , up 0.09 per cent. The markets tracked the weak Asian indices and also witnessed heavy profit booking, after a long sustained rally last week. The Sensex touched an intra-day low at 13,200.36.

Markets pull up

"IT stocks helped markets to pull up after the profit booking earlier in the day. However, this correction was due," said Mr Shailesh Shah, Broker, Rapid Capital Services. The Reserve Bank of India's draft circular on Friday, which capped banks' exposure to capital markets, also cautioned market players, said dealers.

However, mid-cap and small-cap stocks took a beating with the BSE Mid Cap index ending 0.85 per cent down at 5,454.43 points and BSE Small Cap index lost 0.96 per cent at 6,298.49 points.

Among the sectoral indices, only the BSE IT and BSE Teck indices gained. BSE IT gained 2.31 per cent while BSE Teck gained 2.33 per cent. Bharti Airtel was the biggest gainer, up 3.98 per cent at Rs 604.30. Infosys Technologies, Reliance Communications, TCS, Satyam Computers and Wipro posted gains to help the recovery.