Nifty in tight range; Maruti surges 3% post June sales nos

Indian equity benchmarks continued to move in a tight range since early trade as they are looking for a fresh trigger to take the Friday's upmove further. The market had rallied more than 2% on Friday after European leaders agreed to support region's banks.

The BSE benchmark slipped 10 points to 17,420.19 while the NSE benchmark was up 0.90 points at 5,279.80.

Country's largest lender State Bank of India and housing finance company HDFC gained 0.6% each. Private sector lender HDFC Bank rose 1% whereas its rival ICICI Bank lost over 1%.

Top car maker Maruti Suzuki rallied 3% intraday as company's sales spiked 20.3% year-on-year to 96,597 units in June. Its domestic sales grew 10.3% to 83,531 units and exports jumped 27.1% to 13,066 units during the same period. However, Tata Motors, Hero Motocorp and Bajaj Auto were down 0.7-1.4%.

Engineering and construction major by sales Larsen & Toubro rose 0.4% and state-owned power equipment manufacturer BHEL moved up 1.4%.

However, shares of ITC, Reliance Industries, TCS, HUL and ONGC declined 0.4-0.8%.

Adani Enterprises was among the top five most active shares on the BSE with volume of 21.63 lakh equity shares. The stock was flat.

In the second line shares, Dewan Housing, Arvind, MindTree, HCC and Jubilant Foodworks rallied 4-5% whereas TVS Motorm Manappuram Finance, Info Edge, EID Parry and Alstom T&D slipped 2-3%.

The market breadth was strong as about two shares advanced for every share declining on the BSE. The BSE Midcap and Smallcap indices were up 0.8% and 1%, respectively.