Markets rebound in mid-noon deals

After languishing in the negative territory in the early noon trades, the markets have rebounded into the positive zone on the back of fresh buying in FMCG stocks. ITC and Hindustan Unilever are up around 1% each in mid-noon deals.

Meanwhile, the Sensex is now up 64 points at 18,583. The Nifty has added 13 points to 5,564.
______________________________________________________
(Updated at 1255 hrs)

The markets are languishing in the negative zone amid persistent weakness in auto, banking and select IT stocks. The Sensex after the early 277-point swing, fall from a high of 18,644 to a low of 18,367, has now been moving sideways. The Sensex is now down 65 points at 18,454.

The NSE Nifty has declined 23 points to 5,529.

The BSE Auto index has dropped 1% to 9,133. The Bankex and IT index are down around 0.5% each at 12,583 and 6,031, respectively.

The market breadth is now marginally negative - out of 2,644 stocks traded so far, 1,389 have declined and 1,135 have advanced on the BSE.

Among the index stocks - Bharti Airtel has jumped over 2% to Rs 359. Tata Power too has added nearly 2% to Rs 1,250.

On the other hand, Jaiprakash Associates and Tata Motors have shed 2% each at Rs 85 and Rs 1,177, respectively.

Hero Honda, HDFC Bank, Maruti Suzuki, Reliance Infrastructure and Wipro are the other prominent losers.