Nifty closes flat; Jet Air, Dr Reddy's shine

Indian Equity markets closed flat as investors booked profits after a sharp rally following fiscal cliff deal yesterday. Analysts say buying interest may continue above 6020 levels, but profit booking may set in if the level is not maintined. Stocks in the oil & gas, IT and Telecom sectors were the main drivers in the market today. Traded volumes were limited to 1 lakh crore but advance decline ratio stood 2:1. European markets too were trading in the red after its rally post fiscal cliff deal.

The Sensex closed up 50.54 points or 0.26% at 19764.78, and the Nifty shut shop up 12.15 points or 0.20% at 6005.40. Profit booking was visible in banking stocks and momentum shifted to midcap and small cap counters.

Stocks with noticiable gains included Dr Reddy's and Jet Airways, closing up 4.70 percent and 2.35 percent respectively. Jet Airways rose on talks that its deal with Etihad are in the final stages. Dr Reddy's gained after the company announced that it had launched Finasteride tablets (1 mg), a bioequivalent generic version of Propecia in the US market.

In oil and Gas sector Cairn (up 2.24 percent), ONGC (1.95 percent), Reliance (1.51 percent) had a good run after Rangarajan panel suggested mandating a price of domestically produced natural gas at an average of international hub prices and cost of imported LNG instead of present mechanism of market discovery.

Infosys and TCS (up 1.24 percent each ) were the frontrunners in the IT space after Gartner revised IT spending growth forecast by 4.2 percent to USD 3.73 trillion in 2013.

Investors flocked telecom space on news that EGoM will put 34 blocks of liberalized spectrum up for next auction. Consequently, Reliance Communication (gain 4.65 percent), Tata Communication (3.54 percent), Bhart Airtel (1.99 percent), Idea Cellular (4.25 percent) and Bharti Infratel (1.64 percent) generated huge interest. The news of Bharti Infratel being included in the FTSE Global Equity Indices from January 7, 2013 also helped the stock.