Despite weak global cues Nifty in 5400 range: Udayan

Udayan Mukherjee, managing editor, CNBC-TV18, say that it was a tight range-bound session today. The market started a bit lower in the morning on the back of weak global cues with most of Asian markets was down. As the day progressed, the Nifty recovered from the morning losses and started to trade in a narrow band of 5400-5430 and stayed in the same range till the end of session despite weak cues from the European markets.

In the last one hour of our trade most European markets were 0.5%-1% down, but the Nifty held out despite some bad performances from the telecom sector today. Bharti traded below Rs 250 today on numerous brokerage downgrades which have come in on earnings and on target prices. Reliance Communications was weak today. Stocks like IDFC and Tata Power did not look better.
Pharmaceuticals were strong, Ranbaxy and Dr Reddy, Infosys was reasonable and BPCL did well. The Nifty managed to stay above 5400, but the broader market was not good. In the last few sessions we have continuously seen that the midcaps have performed lower than the large caps and the markets become quite narrow which is not a great sign and today too, the midcap index did far worse than the Nifty.
There were some positive pockets like auto ancillaries, stocks like Gabriel and Sona Koyo did well. The odd MTNL, Jet Airways, Shasun Pharma, Cox & Kings, Great Offshore and Inox Leisure for some of the names that did quite well.
On the losing side sugar had a bad day. Renuka, Balrampur and Bajaj Hindustan were down quite sharply.
Real estate and infrastructure both struggled quite a bit. Stocks like HDIL, Indiabulls Realty and infra names like IVRCL, GMR and Punj Lloyd were all quite weak. Reliance Power was down. Stocks like Alok Industries, United Spirits and Nagarjuna Construction did not do well.