Market remains rangebound; Oil & gas stocks in focus

Oil & gas majors Reliance Industries and ONGC slumped after gas price hike was halted by the election commission (EC) until 2014 elections

Key benchmark indices moved in a narrow range and hit their intra-day high levels in noon deals led by banking & financial, FMCG and capital good stocks.

At 2:25pm, the barometer Sensex was trading flat with a negative bias at 22,058 levels, it touched a high of 22,079.96 during the day.

While NSE Nifty was trading with marginal gains at the same time, up  2 points or 0.06%, at 6,585 levels.

Bullish equities helped the rupee to breach the appreciation mark of Rs 60.50 in afternoon trades due to dollar flows in equities.

The rupee was quoting at Rs 60.51 compared with previous close of Rs 60.79. The rupee had opened at Rs 60.61 and so far in intra-day trades it touched a high of Rs 60.43 per dollar.

Among BSE indices that track various industrial sectors, BSE Power, capital goods, consumer durables are up between 1-1.6% while Oil & gas, IT and healthcare are on the losing side.   

Oil & gas majors Reliance Industries and ONGC came under pressure in early trades after gas price hike was halted by the election commission (EC) until 2014 elections.

EC had yesterday asked the government to defer notifying doubling of price of the fuel produced by companies such as Reliance Industries till general elections are completed.

Among blue-chips, banking and financial majors HDFC and ICICI Bank, capital goods majors Larsen & Toubro (L&T), BHEL and FMCG biggies such as HUL and ITC are among the top gainers at this hour.