Nifty quiet in early trade; tech, pharma, power gain

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The benchmark Nifty started the day on a quiet note due to lack of global cues. This consolidation phase has been continued post budget rally. Technology, pharma and power stocks along with Reliance and ICICI Bank were seeing buying interest while FMCG and metal stocks lost ground.

At 9:02 hours IST, the Nifty was trading at 5114, down 1.5 points while the Sensex was at 17100, up 2 points. 

The CNX Midcap went up 5 points to 7528; about 399 shares advanced while 272 shares declined on the NSE. 

Among the frontliners, HUL lost 1.5%. P&G is going to slash Tide prices by 20%, so HUL is likely to retaliate with pricing for Rin, reports CNBC-TV18 quoting sources.

Tata Steel fell 0.9%, as there were reports that the company hit by Orissa Govt blanket ban on iron ore mining.

HDFC, Jaiprakash Associates, HCL Tech, ACC, Hero Honda and ITC were losers. However, Ranbaxy Labs, Sulzon Energy, Wipro, Reliance Capital, SAIL, Bharti, TCS and Grasim were gainers.

Man Infraconstruction has seen terrific listing; it was trading at Rs 370, up 46.7% over its issue price of Rs 252 per share.  

Midcap & Smallcap space:

Texmo Pipes shot up 4% on second day on the exchanges. It had surged 54% on Wednesday.

GVK Power and Gammon Infra were up 1.5% each.

Triveni Engg gained 0.5% while Bajaj Hindusthan, Balrampur Chini and Dhampur Sugar declined over 3% each.

NMDC lost 3.6%; its follow-on public offer opened for subscription and its price band is at Rs 300-350 per share.

Global cues:

Asian markets were trading mixed. Nikkei rose 0.9%, as Japan's GDP rose at an annual 3.8% in Q4, slower than preliminary estimate of 4.6%. However, Shanghai and Hang Seng were down 0.33% each. Jakarta, Straits Times, Kospi and Taiwan were flat with negative bias.