Mumbai: A final hour strong profit-booking played spoil-sport today, leading the benchmark Nifty to close almost flat at 7,359.05, down 8.05 points at the National Stock Exchange (NSE).
The index rose during most of the session to reach a massive 7,504-level during intra-day, but investors preferred profit-booking in the final hours ahead of month-end derivative expiry of May-series.
The country is set to witness the swearing-in of Narendra Modi as the Prime Minister later this evening. Shares of Mid-cap and Small-cap companies mainly led the selling, followed by key heavyweights in Energy, Banking, Pharma, Infra, FMCG, Realty and Metal counters. Heavy buying was seen in key IT and Auto counters.
Meanwhile, Foreign institutional investors (FIIs) bought shares worth a net Rs 416.80 crore on last Friday as per provisional data from the stock exchange. The 50-share Nifty resumed smart at 7,428.75 and hovered between a high of 7,504.00 and a low of 7,269.05 before closing at 7,359.05, showing a loss of modest 8.05 points, or 0.11 per cent, over the previous close.
Realty major DLF fell by 5.92 per cent, BHEL by 4.78 per cent, IDFC by 4.68 per cent, Bank of Baroda 4.51 per cent and Tata Power by 2.96 per cent.
While M&M rallied by 6.03 per cent, SSLT by 4.04 per cent, HCL Tech by 3.37 per cent.
Other major losers were GAIL, Hindalco, Asian Paint, NTPC and Reliance. Gainers include Wipro, Tata Motors, Grasim, L&T, Coal India, Sun Pharma and HDFC Bank. Turnover in the cash segment climbed to Rs 30,160.44 crore from Rs 26,018.34 crore as of last Friday. A total of 21,059.59 lakh shares changed hands in 1,12,22,913 trades, while market capitalisation stood at Rs 83,67,801 crore.
