Nifty snaps 4-day winning streak, ends with modest loss

The benchmark Nifty snapped four-day winning streak on Tuesday and closed the rangebound session with moderate losses; it saw consolidation around 6150 level. The sell-off in financial, telecom, capital goods, auto and realty companies' shares weighed on markets.

However, Reliance Industries, JSPL, Sterlite, Infosys, HDFC and Wipro along with FMCG, healthcare and power companies' shares were quite supportive to benchmarks and capped losses.

Overall it was a volatile day for markets today. Vikas Khemani of Edelweiss Securities sees markets remaining fairly range bound at this point in time. "I am not seeing a very-very positive momentum as far as the markets are concerned. I think some of the macro data which came out last week were also not very encouraging. So in my opinion the allocation towards India should be muted. I am not a very-very big believer that we will see liquidity coming through in a big way."

"I think this is a quarter of liquidity from the domestic insurance companies which can definitely provide downside protection. Given a lot of macro headwinds, markets are unlikely to touch new high any time soon. We will have to see, wait and watch how the budget pans out if anything positive surprise there. But broadly I see markets remaining fairly range bound at this point in time."

The 30-share BSE Sensex closed at 20,498.72, with loss of 62.33 points and the 50-share NSE Nifty fell 11.25 points to settle at 6,146.35. Even the Nifty January futures' premium trimmed to 12 points from earlier 20-25 points.

Ambreesh Baliga of Karvy Stock Broking too said it would a rangebound movement. "I don't think we will see new highs. We will get stopped at best closer to 6300-6320. So basically it would be a range bound sort of a movement and possibly over the month of January we should see lower levels closer to 5700-5800 on the fact that the results could be disappointing looking at the sort of a base effect for December of last year."