Sensex northbound; RIL, Wipro, RCom, Rel Infra dip

At 13:31 hours IST - equity benchmarks came off their day's high on the back of downtrend in heavyweight Reliance Industries (slipped 1.8%). Telecom, Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group and private sector power companies' shares along with Wipro, TCS, SAIL, ITC and Dr Reddy's Labs.

However, financial, metal, realty, cement and capital goods companies' shares along with ONGC, Infosys and NTPC were quite strongly supportive to the markets. Even ICICI Bank gained one percent after better-than-expected quarterly numbers.

ICICI Bank reported Q3 net interest income of Rs 2,311.70 crore as against Rs 2,301.70 crore and net profit of Rs 1,437 crore versus Rs 1,374.20 crore.

Even European markets were also supportive, which opened with gap up today. The 30-share BSE Sensex was trading at 19,124, up 117 points and the 50-share NSE Nifty rose 38 points to 5,734. The broader indices too gained 0.6% each.

The BSE Bankex led the major support today with 2.2% gains, which could be short covering ahead of RBI's quarterly policy meet. Experts believe that there could be 25 bps hike in key rates but beyond that would be trigger sell-off.

Country's largest lender SBI showed good performance in Q3FY11 and its margins expanded, supported by CASA & hike in lending rate. The stock rallied 3.7%. HDFC was up 2.8% and Axis Bank jumped 4%. HDFC Bank rose 2%. PNB and Kotak Mahindra Bank were up 0.8-1%.

Heavyweight ONGC shot up 3% while Reliance Industries tanked 1.8%. Among others BHEL rose 3%. Infosys and NTPC were up 1.3% each.

However, Wipro, Reliance Communications, Reliance Infrastructure and Cipla were down 1-2.2%.

SBI, ICICI Bank, KSK Energy Ventures, LIC Housing Finance, Reliance Industries, Axis Bank and Tata Steel were most active shares on exchanges.

In midcap space, Monnet Ispat, Apollo Hospital, Core Projects, KSK Energy Ventures and Sanwaria Agro gained 5-10% while Sunteck Realty, Parsvnath, Gujarat NRE Coke, Peninsula Land and Jyothy Labs lost 2-5%.

In smallcap space, Odyssey Finance, Indiabulls Securities, Jai Balaji Inds, Prraneta Inds and Shristi Infra rallied 10-18%. However, Kennametal, Premier, Surana Inds, Madhucon Projects and Rossell Tea slipped 5-9.5%.

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Nifty hits 5750; financials, metals, capital goods gain

At 11:53 hours IST - consistent buying in financial, capital goods, FMCG, metal and auto companies' shares along with heavyweights ONGC & NTPC pushed the benchmark Nifty above 5,750 level. Short covering could be a reason behind this uptrend, ahead of RBI's quarterly policy meet tomorrow.

Ambareesh Baliga of Karvy Stock Broking says though he sees chances of a pullback rally, but that wouldn