After rising 106 points in initial trade, the BSE benchmark Sensex today witnessed profit-selling in banks, capital goods and metal scrips to end the day flat despite an over 3 per cent spurt in market leader RIL.
The S&P BSE Sensex rose just 7.03 points, or 0.04 per cent, to close at 19,642.75 after hitting day’s high of 19,742.42. It has now gained over 174 points in three straight days.
While RIL clocked 3.13 per cent rise after it said it will invest $5 billion along with BP in the flagging KG-D6 fields, losses in ICICI Bank, ITC, SBI, Tata Motors and L&T almost dragged the 30-share index down.
Tata Steel, Jindal Steel and Sterlite also ended lower. The 50-share National Stock Exchange index Nifty rose by 3.35 points, or 0.06 per cent, to 5,943.05.
“A tug of war was seen between heavy weights in oil & gas and cement sector stocks which gained and metals and financial which saw weakness and traded with losses. Lack of any major domestic resulted in subdued performance,” said Nagji K. Rita, CMD, Inventure Growth and Securities.
Traders said while profit-booking erased most of the day’s gains, an upsurge in RIL, followed by support in HDFC Bank, TCS, Coal India and Hero MotoCorp helped the market barely close in the positive terrain.
A firming trend in Asian region and higher opening in Europe further helped Indian stocks to close up, they added.
After BSE Oil & Gas that rose 1.7 per cent, the BSE Realty sector index was second best performer as it rose 0.77 per cent, followed by BSE Information Technology index 0.60 per cent and BSE TECk 0.29 per cent.