Nifty closes flat; oil mkting, SBI subsidiaries rally

The benchmark Nifty closed rangebound session on a flat note. The index remained at around its previous day's closing value; the range was at 5520-5545. Capital goods, power, technology, telecom, auto, PSU oil & gas and select financial companies' shares helped the Nifty to end at new 30-month high.

Rajan Malik, Director -PCG Advisory at Anand Rathi Financial Services says, there is more upside from here. "The moves clearly indicate that there might be some more upside to this market. But having said that I think cautious approach would help and the risk reward might be against investors at least at this point in time." Another 100-150 points on the Nifty points doable; that is the best possible target that we could achieve at this point in time, he says.

Even European markets and US index futures also helped Indian markets in last half an hour of trade; France's CAC, Germany's DAX and Britain's FTSE were up 0.4-1%. Dow Jones and Nasdaq futures gained 0.3-0.4%.

However, the sell-off in heavyweights like Reliance Industries, ITC, HDFC, HDFC Bank and DLF along with Sterlite, Reliance Infrastructure, Sun Pharma, Ranbaxy and Jaiprakash Associates capped the gains.

The 30-share BSE Sensex closed at 18,409.35, up 7.53 points and the 50-share NSE Nifty rose 12.85 points to 5,543.50. The broader indices outperformed benchmarks; the BSE Midcap Index was up 0.8% and Smallcap up 0.9%.

Shares of oil marketing companies were the top traded counters on exchanges post they got Rs 14,000 crore subsidy payout from the government on August 20. BPCL shot up 11%; HPCL was up 5.5% and IOC up 3%. Among other oil & gas stocks, ONGC rose 2% while Reliance Industries was down 1.2% and GAIL down 0.65%.