Markets remain lacklustre

HUL and L&T top Sensex losers, auto shares up

Markets remained lacklustre in late morning deals today as gains in auto shares failed to offser losses in L&T and Hindustan Unilever.

At 11:30am Sensex was up 18 points at 18,449 and the 50-share Nifty was trading flat at 5,598.

Major Asian benchmark share indices were trading with gains on the back of encouraging South Korea's industrial output data which grew for the first time in four months. The Nikkei was up 1%, the Hang Seng gained 0.6% and the Shanghai COmposite was up 0.3%.

AMong the sectoral indices on the BSE, Healthcare and Auto were the top gainers while Capital Goods, POwer, FMCG, Oil and Gas were the top losers.

Among Sensex stocks, Hindustan Unilever and L&T were the top losers down over 1.4% each.
Other losers include, ONGC, HDFC Bank and index heavyweight Reliance Industries.

Dr Reddy's Labs was among the top Sensex gainers extending its previous day’s around 2% gain after reporting a better-than-expected 32% year-on-year (yoy) jump in net profit at Rs 407 crore in September 2012 quarter on back of strong performance by its pharmaceutical-services and U.S. generic-drugs businesses.

Auto shares such as Tata Motors and Mah&Mah were up 0.8-2.4% each. Maruti Suzuki was up 2.4% extending its previous day’s 2% gain on reporting a better-than-expected net profit of Rs 227 crore for the second quarter as against analyst estimate of Rs 175 crore due to mark-to-market gain of Rs 43 crore on commodities. India’s largest car maker had posted net profit of Rs 240 crore for the same quarter last year.

Other gainers include SBI which rebounded today after yesterday's over 4% drop after the RBI maintained status quo on key policy rates.