The benchmark indices remained unstable in the trade at 11:51 hours IST. Pharmacy, PSU banking, Capital Goods, power and metal stocks along with Bharti and HDFC were seeing buying zeal. Reliance Industries was unstable.
Nevertheless, selling in HUL, TCS, Sterlite, Hero Honda, Infosys, ONGC, ITC, Hindalco, Ambuja Cements, Idea and Unitech registered the profits.
The Nifty earned 17 points and the Sensex increased 55 points. The market breadth was blended; around 561 shares advanced whereas 591 shares fell on the Nifty.
Pharmacy stocks such as Biocon, Cipla, Sun Pharmacy, Dishman Pharmacy, Glenmark, Ranbaxy Labs and Dr Reddys Labs increased 1-4%. As far as the banking sector is concerned, SBI, Bank of Baroda, Axis Bank, PNB and Bank of India were high with 1-2%. ICICI Bank was high with 0.34%.
Stocks such as Hind Rectifiers, Simplex Castings, Stone India, Texmaco, Kalindee Rail Nirman and Titagarh Wagons were high with 2-5%, before Railway budget.
BHEL, L&T, Siemens, Suzlon Energy, Alstom Projects and ABB were high with 0.8-2%. In the power sector, Tata Power, Lanco Infratech, Power Grid Corp, GVK Power, NTPC, Torrent Power, Reliance Infrastructure and Reliance Power earned 1-2.9%.