Lacklustre trades continue

Markets continued to move sideways in afternoon trades helped by realty and auto stocks. The Sensex was up 54 points at 18,817. Earlier in the day, the index had touched a low of 18,782. Nifty, on the other hand, was up 24 points at 5,651.

Rate sensitives - realty, auto and bankex - shone in today's market. BSE realty index surged 3.5% to 2,155. Auto index was up 1% at 8,869. Bankex was up 0.8% at 12,967.

Anant Raj Industries zoomed 10% to Rs 69. DLF, among the big names, was up nearly 6% at Rs 233. Unitevh gained 2.5% to Rs 33. Sobha Developers, Orbit Corp and Peninsula Land were up 3-5% each.

The auto sector also moved up on the back of good sales figures for the month of June. Tata Motors surged 2% to Rs 1,015. The auto majors' sales declined marginally in June to 66,358 units. Mahindra & Mahindra gained 1%, followed by Bajaj Auto and Hero Honda. Bajaj  Auto sales in June have reportedly gone up by 16% at 366,657 units.

Broader markets outperformed the benchmark by a good margin. The BSE mid-cap index gained 0.8% to 6,960. Small-cap index advanced 1% to 8,302.

Asian bourses ended in the green on a firm US manufacturing data and easing of concerns over Greece. Shanghai Composite and Hang Seng gained 1.7% each. Nikkei added 1% to 9,965.

Markets received a positive push from Foreign Institutional Investments in June. According to provisional data, FIIs have invested Rs 2,662.7 crore in June in India.

BSE market breadth continued to be positive. Out of 2,831 stocks traded, 1,698 advanced while 1,015 declined in trades.