Sensex ends flat; broader markets outperform

The market closed flat on Monday after a sharp recovery in the second half of trade. Equity benchmarks tried to get back into green for a while before the closing, but cautious European markets ahead of Angela Merkel and Nicolas Sarkozy meet weighed down over the market. Overall expectation of the third quarter earnings kept the market nervous today.

The Sensex fell 34.08 points, to close at 15,814.72 and the Nifty declined 4.10 points, to end at 4,742.80 after showing about 50 points recovery from the day's low.

Ambareesh Baliga, COO of Way2Wealth feels the market is in a range of 4650-4700 on the lower side and possibly 4850 on the higher side. "Unless we break either of these decisively, we will not really see a major movement," he said.

Index heavyweights Reliance Industries and Bharti Airtel fell 1% and 3%, respectively. Among financial and banking stocks, SBI tanked 2% and HDFC was down 0.8% while HDFC Bank gained 0.8% and ICICI Bank was flat.

In the auto space, Tata Motors and Bajaj Auto fell 1.5% each; Hero Motocorp and M&M were marginally lower whereas Maruti Suzuki gained 1.8%.

However, the rally in BHEL and L&T has limited the downside, which gained 3% and 0.6%, respectively.