Nifty hovers around 5300; SBI, RIL, Infosys most active

The NSE Nifty continued to move in a narrow range around the 5300 level since the opening trade. The reason may be the expiry that will take place on Thursday. Reliance Industries' fourth quarter earnings could not even help market rally today, though company surprised the street by reporting gross refining margin at USD 7.6 a barrel as against USD 6.8 a barrel QoQ.

Oil & gas producers and index heavyweights Reliance Industries and ONGC were up 1.2% and 0.7%, respectively.

The BSE benchmark gained 22 points at 17,396.12 and the NSE benchmark moved up 2.6 points to 5,293.45.

Country's largest coal mining company Coal India rose nearly 1%. Tata Steel and SAIL, country's largest steel producers rallied 1% and 2.8%, respectively.

Maruti Suzuki, top car maker was up 0.8%.

However, Reliance Communications topped the selling list, falling over 2%.

DLF, India's largest real estate firm by market cap dropped 1.7% as the BSE will excluded the stock from its benchmark index Sensex from June 11 and in place of that, it will include Dr Reddy's Labs.

Tata Power, Infosys, BPCL, Hindalco and BHEL were down around 1.5%.

Most active shares on the BSE were AP Paper Mills with 7.27 lakh shares and Hexaware Tech with 14.53 lakh shares, which gained 18% and 0.3% amid heavy volumes, respectively. State Bank of India, Reliance Industries and Infosys too were most active.

Even shares of all paper manufacturers were witnessing value buying interest. Ballarpur Industries surged 5% and West Coast Paper spiked 16.5%.