Live Market Updates: Nifty flattens, midcaps cool off; realty rallies

Moneycontrol Bureau

After a stable start, the Nifty gave up its early gains and flattened out at around 5690. The Sensex was up 26.98 points at 18862.75, while the Nifty added 16.35 points at 5698.90.

The midcap index too cooled off from morning gains but stocks like Core Education, Indiabulls Power and Delta Corp continued to rally.

Sterlite Industries, Jindal Steel, Tata Motors, Wipro and ONGC were the biggest losers of the day.

Gainers in BSE realty index -- HDIL rises 6.7 percent, Orbit Corp up 6.5 percent, DLF gains 6 percent, DB Realty rises 5 percent, Unitech gains 4 percent.

Auto stocks were feeling the pressure of weak March sales numbers. Tough times set to continue with weakness seen across segments. Estimates indicated a 10 percent drop in Maruti's volumes while in the two-wheeler segment, TVS Motor's year-on-year sales have dipped over 8 percent, flat performance on a monthly basis. Bajaj Auto and Hero Moto also likely to post muted numbers.

Meanwhile, BHEL, Dr Reddy’s Labs, L&T, Infosys and Cipla continued to support the indices.