Quiet day, says Udayan. Who are todays leaders, laggards?

A third day of consolidation for the Nifty. It’s had a great run for 12 days and the last three days has seen it just spend time in a narrow 50 point range. It’s been very sideways for the Nifty, says CNBC-TV18’s managing editor, Udayan Mukherjee. Nothing wrong with that, it has had a phenomenal run from 5,300 to 5,900 and now it’s just dithering for a bit. Maybe soaking in some supply and making up its mind. It’s been in a very tight range between 5,850-5,950 over the last few days. Today was an even tighter zone of about 30-40 points on the Nifty.

It reined it in by some selling in largecap names or weakness in largecap names like ONGC and NTPC particularly. TCS also had an off day and Sesa Goa was a bit quiet after the gains of the last couple of days.

Conversely, the bank Nifty has done well today which is interesting because that’s been consolidating the last couple of days so HDFC , SBI , ICICI and Axis Bank did well. Some of the metal names like Hindalco and SAIL were strong and L&T saw some buying during the course of the day.

Of course, the midcaps continued to deliver, 3:1 market breadth. The midcap index is up nearly 1% and very good gains in a couple of sectors like infrastructure where GMR , GVK , Lanco , SREI Infra , Hindustan Construction , all those stocks looked very good.

A late rally in fertilizer names like Chambal , Nagarjuna and RCF . Unitech has been 10% up over the last couple of days. So that's a good run. Lovable Lingerie was very strong again. Aptech and Gitanjali Gems were the two stocks, which caught the eye and Indiabulls Securities wasn't weak today.

Punjab Alkalies went a little soft because of the news of it receiving no financial bids in the divestment but otherwise a good day for midcaps. But volumes were a bit thin today. Maybe the momentum has dried up for the moment and the market seems to be in pause mode.

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