Traders choose to stay light before the Union Budget.
The Economic Survey data failed to have any impact on stock market indices today as traders chose to stay light before the Union Budget.
Taking cues from the US markets, which were marginally up, the Asian markets, including India’s, opened in the green. However, towards the later session, most of them slipped from their day’s highs.
The Hang Seng fell 200.68 points (1.09 per cent) and the Straits Times dropped 31.73 (1.35 per cent).
The Bombay Stock Exchange Sensitive Index, or Sensex, opened 48.53 points higher at 14,694.31. After the Economic Survey was tabled, the Sensex spurted to the day’s high of 14,764.35. After that, it slipped to a low of 14,469.69, down 294.66 points on weak opening in the UK market. In the final session, there was some buying from institutions.
Both the main indices closed flat. The Sensex closed marginally up by 13.02 points, or 0.09 per cent, to 14,658.49. The CNX Nifty ended flat at 4,348.85, up 7.95 points, or 0.18 per cent.
“The markets were highly indecisive today. Some postive news in the Economic Survey data helped the rally, but the markets crashed later as investors preferred to stay light before the Union Budget,” said Ambareesh Baliga, vice-president, Karvy Stock Broking.
The market breadth was fairly positive. Out of 2,692 shares traded, 1,458 advanced (54.16 per cent), 1,142 declined (42.42 per cent) while 92 remained unchanged on the BSE today.
Among the Sensex stocks, ONGC soared 7.02 per cent on hope of lower subsidy burden following the hike in fuel prices. Tata Steel advanced 6.37 per cent on the back of its plan to raise $600million through global depository receipts.
Grasim Industries was up 4.20 per cent, Sterlite was up 3.75 per cent and DLF was up 3.12 per cent.
BHEL slipped 3.03 per cent, followed by Reliance (2.29 per cent), Bharti Airtel (2.27 per cent), Reliance Communications (1.83 per cent), Tata Motors (1.67 per cent) and Maruti Suzuki (1.53 per cent).
Other gainers were the metal index (3.26 per cent) public sector (1.95 per cent) and realty (1.55 per cent). Capital goods, which slipped 1 per cent, was the worst performer.
Foreign institutional investors (FIIs) were net buyers of Rs 247.26 crore while domestic institutional investors were net buyers of Rs 212.65 crore, according to provisional data from the BSE.a
