Markets surrender early advantage; end flat

The markets began with a bang, but ended with a whimper--this cliched expression encapsulates the day's proceedings. The Sensex had surged by more than 250 points in early trades on the back of firm Asian stocks and strong trade data from China, but surrendered all its gains to close lower by 13 points at 17526 and the Nifty ended at 5249, up 4 points.

The benchmark indices have been stagnant after touching a new 52-week high early last week. And the volumes have been abysmal.

The broader markets, however, continued their outperformance. The mid-cap and small-cap indices gained 0.9% and 1.8% respectively and the market breath was overwhelmingly in favour of the bulls in the ratio of 3:1.

Meanwhile, the exports in December rose to $14.6 billion, up 9.4 per cent over November, on the back of a strong growth in pharma, engineering and auto components sectors.

The realty sector built on Friday's gains. DLF was the leading gainer on the Sensex, strengthening by 2.3% at Rs 399. Indiabulls and Unitech rallied between 2% and 4%. 

And software pivotals rose ahead of Infosys' Q3 results on Tuesday. TCS closed higher by 1.9% at Rs 714 and Infosys ended up 0.9% at Rs 2488. Wipro, however, ended lower by 1% at Rs 662. 

On the other hand, the energy sector faced the brunt of Reliance's weakness. The index bellwether was the top Sensex loser, shedding 1.8% at Rs 1081, after raising about Rs 3,465 crore through the sale of 3.3 crore treasury stocks within days of raising the offer for bankrupt chemical maker LyondellBasell Industries to $13.5 billion. Cairn lost 1.7% at Rs 300 and HPCL shed 0.7% at Rs 390%.

Reliance topped the value charts on the BSE with a total turnover of Rs 233.32 crore. This was followed by DLF (Rs 122.34 crore), Unitech (Rs 113.83 crore), Aban Offshore (Rs 103.71 crore) and Mundra Port (Rs 91.97 crore).

Unitech led the volume charts on the BSE with trades of 12.71 million. It was followed by IFCI (8.62 million), Suzlon (8.31 million), Ispat (5.68 million) and Reliance Natural Resources (3.84 million).