Asian markets ended lower today on some weak corporate earnings while European stocks, too, were trading sluggish as US index futures closed lower, which were cut short by Hurricane Sandy that is supposed to hit the east coast early this week. US equity markets, too, were closed today and also could remain closed on Tuesday.
Brokers attributed listless trading to second quarter monetary policy review meeting by the Reserve Bank of India RBI) tomorrow, which kept the investors on the back foot.
FIIs pulled out over Rs 750 crore in the last two days of the last week as per provisional data with stock exchanges.
The 50-share Nifty moved in a narrow range of 5,698.30 and 5,645.10 before concluding at 5,665.60, showing a minor rise of 1.30 points, or 0.02 per cent.
Among top five Nifty gainers, country's third major software services exporter, Wipro, was the top gainer with a rise of 2.62 per cent followed by Hero MotoCorp (1.87 per cent), Tata Power (1.72 per cent), Dr Reddy's Lab (1.64 per cent) and RIL (1.53 per cent).
However, BHEL tumbled by 6.41 per cent on weak Q2 earnings and was the top loser from Nifty followed by Tata Motors (1.82 per cent), BPCL (1.55 per cent), Coal India (1.39 per cent) and L&T (1.27 per cent).
The turnover in cash segment declined further to Rs 9,207.22 crore from Rs 9,557.43 crore last Friday. Overall, 5,385.75 lakh shares changed hands in 48,43,334 trades. Total market capitalisation stood at Rs 63,72,862 crore.
