Market rally comes to a halt

The markets have taken a pause after rallying for eight consecutive trading sessionsm to sign off FY2011 in style. The Sensex has been trading in a narrow range of around 150 points since this morning and is currently at 19,389, lower by 55 points and the Nifty is at 5813, down 20 points. In a reversal of recent trend, the broader markets are outshining their larger counterparts; the midcap index is at 6950, higher by 76 points and the smallcap index is at 8313, up 137 points.

The benchmark indices surged by as much as 9% during the past week till Thursday to post their highest returns in 21 months, buoyed by the upbeat sentiment on the global market front.

Meanwhile, the Asian markets continued from wheere they left in the previous session, with the Hang Seng, Shanghai, Straits Times and Seoul indices gaining in the region of a percent each. And Europe has also opened on a cheerful note, with the FTSE, CAC and DAX gaining anywhere between half a percent and 1% each.

Banking and IT indices are witnessing profit-booking after the gains of the recent past. SBI has slid by 1.9% at Rs 2712, ICICI Bank has weakened by 0.9% at Rs 1102 and HDFC Bank has lost 0.3% at Rs 2334. And in the IT space, Wipro is down 0.6% at Rs 475 and Infosys has edged lower by 0.4% at Rs 3222.

On the other hand, Reliance Communication continues to hog the limelights, spurting by 3.4% at Rs 111, BHEL has advanced 2.4% at Rs 2112 and Hindalco has gained 1.8% at Rs 212. And Tata Steel has risen 1.3% at Rs 625 after taking Tinplate as its subsidiary by hiking its stake in the later from 42.88% to 59.45% due to automatic and compulsory conversion of 3% fully convertible debentures of Rs 100 each held by the company into equity shares on 1 April 2011.

The market breadth is positive. Out of 2859 stocks traded on the BSE, there are 2009 advancing stocks as against 769 declines.