Sensex, Nifty End Flat With Negative Bias; Mid And Small Caps Outperform

The S&P BSE Sensex and NSE Nifty 50 index ended marginally lower in trade on Monday on the back of losses in HDFC Bank, Reliance Industries, Tata Consultancy Services, Larsen & Toubro and Asian Paints. However, gains in Bharti Airtel, HDFC, Infosys, Axis Bank and Tata Steel helped in capping the downside for the benchmarks. The Sensex spiked in first 30 minutes of trade before turning rangebound for the day. The Nifty 50 index hit a high of 11,946.20 and low of 11,867.60.

The Sensex ended 73 points lower at 40,284 and Nifty closed 11 points higher at 11,884.

Eleven of 19 sector gauges compiled by BSE ended higher led by the S&P BSE Telecom index's 3.4 per cent gain. Metal, Healthcare and Basic Materials indexes also advanced over 1 per cent each.

On the other hand, S&P BSE Capital Goods index declined 0.7 per cent.

The mid- and small-cap shares outperformed their larger peers as the S&P BSE MidCap index rose 0.4 per cent and the S&P BSE SmallCap index advanced 0.3 per cent.

Yes Bank was top loser in the Nifty 50 basket of shares, the stock fell 4.3 per cent to close at Rs 65.75. Bajaj Auto, Britannia Industries, Mahindra & Mahindra, Hero MotoCorp, ONGC, Nestle India and HDFC Bank also fell between 1.2-2 per cent each.

On the flipside, Bharti Airtel, Tata Steel, UPL, Hindalco, Bharat Petroleum, Sun Pharma and JSW Steel were among the gainers.

The overall market breadth was negative as 1,404 shares ended lower while 1,153 closed higher on the BSE.