Flat trade continues

Reliance Industries, Infosys and HDFC weighs

Markets continue to trade flat in the early noon deals as the gains in TCS, ITC and Bharti Airtel were wiped out by the weakness in heavyweight Reliance Industries, Infosys and HDFC counters.

Earlier in the day, the Sensex touched a high of 20,007 in the opening trades for the first time since January 2011.The low for the day, thus far, stands at 19,898.

At 12:55hrs, the Sensex was up five points at 19,912 and the Nifty was hovering around the 6,028 levels with a four point gains.

Meanwhile, broader markets too witnessed some selling as both the midcap and the smallcap indices pared gains. The indices were up 0.1% each.

Among the sectors, Banks, Metal, Oil & Gas, Power and PSU were in the red. On the other hand, realty and Auto indices gained 0.8% and 0.5% respectively on rate cut hopes. FMCG, Capital Goods and IT indices were the other major gainers, adding 0.2-0.4%.

TCS up nearly 2% continues to remain the top gainer among the Sensex-30 stocks followed by Bharti Airtel, ITC, Maruti Suzuki, Bajaj Auto, Gail India, Cipla and Tata Motors up between 1-1.6%.

The ones in the red among the top 30 were Sterlite, Hero MotoCorp, Jindal Steel, Coal India, Hindustan Unilever, Sun Pharma and SBI down 0.8-1.5%.

The market breadth was negative. 1366 stocks declined as compared to 1391 advanced on the BSE.