Nifty ends flat as investors stay cautious ahead of poll results

The market on Friday closed the rangebound session on a flat note as investors awaited results of assembly elections in five states due tomorrow. They also maintained cautious stance ahead of January industrial output data due later today and Federal Reserve policy meeting next week.Investors ignored the exit polls announced on Thursday. The exit poll results were not clear as some media outlets predicted a majority for the ruling BJP while others showed gains but not majority in Uttar Pradesh. The state is an important metric as it gives most number of representatives in the Upper House of the Parliament.The 30-share Sensex was up 17.10 points at 28946.23, and the Nifty up 7.55 points at 8934.55, partly supported by positive global cues.A BJP victory in Uttar Pradesh assembly elections will lead to euphoria in the market, despite the Street factoring in the party's win, says Manishi Raychaudhuri of BNP Paribas. Sensex is likely to touch 30,300 points by the end of 2017, he adds. Meanwhile, Nilesh Shah of Kotak Mahindra AMC says the actual results many a times have been different from exit polls. So, Tuesday would be a better day to gauge the market move, post the actual outcome of election results for Uttar Pradesh, he adds.UR Bhat of Dalton Capital Advisors says going ahead the US Federal Reserve meet and roll-out of the goods and services tax (GST) will act as a catalyst for the market.For the week, the Sensex and Nifty gained 0.4 percent each.Indian equity markets will remain shut on Monday for Holi holiday.Infosys, TCS, L&T, HDFC Bank, Bharti Airtel and Hero Motocorp were gainers among Sensex stocks while ICICI Bank, ITC, Reliance Industries, SBI and Bajaj Auto were losers.Jindal Steel & Power’s shares rallied 6 percent to close at Rs 125.50 after Edelweiss upgraded the stock to buy from hold and raised target price to Rs 160 from Rs 97 earlier on ramp up in Angul capacity and likely debt reduction.Gold loan companies, Manappuram Finance (down 4.5 percent) and Muthoot Finance (down 3.85 percent), were under pressure after the Reserve Bank of India introduced restrictions in cash disbursements. It placed a limit of Rs 20,000 for cash disbursement, while the rest would be in a non-cashless form.Alembic Pharma jumped up 3.5 percent after the company received no observations for bioequivalence facility at Baroda unit that inspected by USFDA between March 6 and 10.KEC International gained 4.5 percent on receiving major orders worth Rs 1,943 crore in transmission, cable and solar businesses.Godrej Industries was up 3 percent as Godrej Agrovet kicked off IPO process and hired Kotak and is in process to hire two more managers for the issue.The market breadth indicated the trend in favour of declines as 1,164 shares had advanced while 1,638 shares fell.Markets in Europe were trading in positive territory as investors turned their attention to the release of non-farm payrolls in the US that will bring more clarity on whether the Federal Reserve will announce an interest rate hike next week. France's CAC, Germany's DAX and Britain's FTSE were up 0.5-0.8 percent at the time of closing of Indian equities.