After trading in positive terrain for most of the day, benchmark indices pared early gains at the fag end of the session to close almost flat on Tuesday. The 30-share Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) Sensex, after gaining 360 points in intra-day trades, gave up its gains to end the day at 14,833.46 points, adding only 23.97 points or 0.16% while the broader Nifty of the National Stock Exchange (NSE) closed at 4,533 points, gaining 32.90 points or 0.66%.
Dealers said investors are playing safe ahead of a crucial US Federal Reserve meet and are awaiting a clear picture to emerge from it.
Prashant Bhansali, director, Mehta Equities, said, ?Taking a cue from the global markets, we saw our markets going up on Tuesday in the early trades but redemption pressure from the FIIs still prevails, which brought the markets down. We also saw investors liquidate their positions. However, global cues will still define the way our markets will move and we will see such intermitant rallies. However, the markets will remain range-bound at least for the next few weeks.”
Experts also believe that Tuesday?s intra-day gain can also be attributed to some short-covering at lower levels, especially in the heavy weight stocks by investors who would not like to carry their position ahead of a long week-end as the markets are closed on March 20 and March 21 on account of Id-E-Milad and Good Friday. The Nifty March contract ended the day at 4,544 points, a premium of 11 points from its spot price, as the open interest for the contract shed around 43 lakh contracts or 11.42% to 3.4 crore contracts.
Meanwhile, according to the provisional figures from stock exchanges, amid huge gross values, the foreign institutional investors (FIIs) continued to be net sellers at Rs1,011.05 crore and the domestic institutional investors were net buyer at Rs 177.33 crore.
