Sensex, Nifty lacklustre; banks up ahead of RBI policy

Despite strong support from Wall Street, Europe and Asia, Indian indices have been performing on a tepid note. Bank stocks have found support ahead of Reserve Bank of India's policy review on Tuesday. Steet is anticipating at least a 25 basis point cut in benchmark rates.

At 11.10 AM, the Sensex was up 8.53 points at 20112.06, and the Nifty up 0.15 points or 0.00% at 6074.80. Midcaps have regained some of its lost field after the battering it received last week.

Banks like SBI, ICICI Bank, HDFC Bank, Axis Bank and Kotak Mahindra edged up between 0.36 percent and less than 1 percent ahead of RBI's monetary policy review. Midcap banks were down marginally. Bonds were seen rallying in expectation of a rate cut tomorrow.

Meanwhile, the euro moved near an 11-month high against the dollar on Monday on mounting signs of recovering economic confidence in Europe, while the yen slipped to a 2-1/2-year low versus the dollar on expectations of more monetary easing in Japan.

Hero MotoCorp (178 percent), Mahindra and Mahindra ( 1.71 percent), GAIL (1.56 percent), Wipro (1.47 percent) and Maruti Suzuki (1.23 percent) were the top performers on the Sensex. Maruti has been a lead performer on the bourses and UBS upgraded the stock to 'buy' from neutral', citing the benefits from a weakening Japanese yen

HDIL continued to stay down over 1 percent although buying was seen in real estate stocks like DLF, Prestige Estate and Shobha Developer.