Mkt stays sluggish; street not too excited about RBI policy

It was a sluggish start to the week. The Nifty traded softly throughout the day before closing at around 5,850, global markets stayed subdued as well. This sluggishness was may be due to the December effect - news flows slowing coming to an end and even before the monetary policy tomorrow, there is no sign of great excitement on the street, said CNBC-TV18's managing editor Udayan Mukherjee.

Finally, the Nifty after trading in a range through the day closed at around 5850 level. Metal stocks continued to do well for the second day and there was some action in the auto sector as well. Maruti, Bajaj Auto and Mahindra and Mahindra did well.From the FMCG space HUL and NTPC were also winners. Bharti was the biggest drag on the index losing 3.5 percent, so that continues to stumble. IT stocks looked a bit weak. TCS and Wipro both closed in the red, HDFC and HDFC Bank were uncharacteristically weak today. BHEL, JP Associates and Siemens from the capital good space looked slightly weak. The breadth was not special. Midcap did marginally better than the largecaps, but nothing spectacular. There were some big movers like JM Financial had a big 10 percent rally.NMDC continued to do very well. A couple of midcap real estate plays like Kolte Patil and DB Realty were big winners. Fortis was up 6-7 percent after it sold off their dental business. Adani Ports, NHPC and Voltas were also big winners. There were not too many big losers in the midcap space, but IRB infra was down 5-6 percent, so that was a surprising sell-off and stocks like Kingfisher and Shree Renuka Sugar also closed in red. Apart form this, it was a quiet start to the week.