Nifty in narrow range; midcaps, smallcaps outperform

The 50-share NSE Nifty remained in a narrow range of 5215-5240 since early trade due to lack of global and local cues. The market is waiting for some actions on reforms from new finance minister P Chidambaram, and outcome of Federal Reserve's meeting (that will end today) and European Central Bank's meeting (that scheduled for Thursday).

The BSE benchmark gained 18.51 points at 17,254.69 and the NSE benchmark rose 5.3 points to 5,234.30. However, the broader markets outperformed benchmarks - BSE Midcap and Smallcap indices were up over 0.8%.

Country's largest lender State Bank of India rallied 1.66% while its rivals HDFC Bank and ICICI Bank were down 0.6% and 0.2%, respectively.

Drug producer Cipla shot up 4.5% due to higher than expected numbers in the quarter ended June 2012.

FMCG major Hindustan Unilever, housing finance company HDFC, India's second largest two-wheeler maker Bajaj Auto and private power producer Tata Power rallied 1%
each.

Index heavyweights Reliance Industries and ITC moved up marginally.

Engineering and construction major Larsen & Toubro and state-owned power equipment manufacturer BHEL went up 0.44% and 1.65%, respectively.

Country's largest software services exporters TCS, Infosys and Wipro were down between 0.6% and 0.9%.

Telecom operator Bharti Airtel, state-owned oil & gas producer, two-wheeler major Hero Motocorp and top car maker Maruti Suzuki declined 1% each.

Coal India, one of the world's largest coal mining company remained down more than 3% after the board members yesterday agreed to supply at least 80% of the coal needed to fuel new power projects, a condition set by the government, but stipulated it could use a mix of 15% imported coal versus 65% domestic.

In the second line shares, Dewan Housing, HT Media, Bayer Cropscience, Delta Corp and Anant Raj Industries gained 5-8% while Glodyne Tech, Voltas, Schneider Electric, Godfrey Phillip and Tulip Telecom slipped 2-5%.