Nifty flat; BPCL, Cairn India, ICICI Bk, Wipro top gainers

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At 13.01 hrs IST, the Sensex was trading with some choppiness below the 15900 levels. Some buying was seen in pharma, capital goods, banks and metal stocks while auto and FMCG stocks witnessed selling pressure. ICICI Bank, L&T, ONGC, Cairn India and BHEL were positive contributors to the bourses.

The Sensex was down 16.89 points or 0.11% at 15886.94, and the Nifty was up 5.70 points or 0.12% at 4699.85.

About 1680 shares advanced, 1069 shares declined, and 424 shares were unchanged.

Nilesh Shah of Envision Capital is of the view that markets are probably in some kind of a pause mode at present. "I would probably say that the market is in some kind of a consolidation phase," he said. He believes 4,700 on the Nifty will not get breached very easily and, that, clearly, has got a lot to do with valuations.

Top gainers on the bourses were BPCL at Rs 522.50 up 4.29%, Cairn India at Rs 249.15 up 3.79% and Wipro at Rs 510 up 2.38%, Wipro at Rs 508.55 up 2.11%, ICICI Bank at Rs 788.20 up 1.92%, Sun Pharma at Rs 1,203.25 up 1.77%.

However, Maruti Suzuki, Tata Motors, M&M, Tata Motors and Hero Honda were top losers on the bourses.

Top gainers on the BSE Midcap - Hindustan Oil Exploration, Sun Pharma Adv, ING Vysya Bank, Shriram TransFin and Corporation Bank were up 6-18%.

Top gainers on the BSE Smallcap - Shriram EPC, DCB, Selan Explore, Himadri Chem and Ganesh Housing were up 10-20%.

On the next page - see how Indian markets performed in the last couple of hours