Nifty ends with moderate gains amid volatility

Indian equity benchmarks closed the session with moderate gains amid consolidation on Thursday, especially after a sharp spike up of 3.5% seen in equities on Tuesday. The Nifty has seen a big swing of 103 points in intra-day trade due to Libya worries.

The market started trade with negative bias on profit booking as well as rise in brent crude oil prices to USD 106 a barrel. However, benchmarks showed sharp recovery in afternoon trade after the news that Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi accepted peace plan to end crisis in North African country, according to agencies. But again there were reports from agencies that fresh air strike has hit Brega oil terminal in East Libya, reports CNBC-TV18. So there was no confirmation on any news related to Libya.

Fairly sceptical of the peace plan, Jason Feer vice-president and Singapore bureau chief at Argus Media too said, "We are yet to hear the government's official announcement on the plan."

Sajiv Dhawan of JV Capital Services too said, "There is a problem obviously of higher oil prices, and we got various news flows; sometimes there is a peace process going on in Libya and again the markets sold off quite heavily as soon as there was news of fresh attacks. So it's going to be quite tricky."

More importantly it seems that Indian markets have already priced in those factors. Global markets also staged a rebound after a sell-off seen yesterday on over-reactions to Libya worries, which was also supportive to the benchmarks. European markets and US index futures were trading 0.5-1% higher, at the time of closing of Indian equities.

The 30-share BSE Sensex gained 43.26 points at 18,489.76 and the 50-share NSE Nifty rose 13.90 points, to end at 5536.20.