Sentiment is down, but no sign of breakdown yet: Udayan

The RBI rate hike has driven sentiment down, but good earnings and promise of a brighter tomorrow is keeping the Nifty adrift. While the bulls were dormant in today's trades, the bears too lost no sleep, calling almost a tie at the end of the day. The Nifty evidently put up a bit of a struggle today, says Udayan Mukherjee, managing editor of CNBC-TV18.

Earnings calls of industry majors such as ICICI Bank and Idea buoyed up the market, and those stocks responded intra-day.
In the morning, the Nifty had gone very close to 5450, but during the course of the day, it has only been trying to get back to those 5500 levels.
On a broader scale, the market traded quite flat and ultimately ended in the red today.While experts debate on the quantum of fall in the Nifty over the week on a comparative basis, it could have been worse, says Mukherjee.
"The way we started off this morning with global pressures, we could have gone down close to 5400 kind of levels," he says. "In this zone of support between 5400-5500, we have been able to see a little bit of buying in a couple of high quality names," he points out.