Markets end almost flat on profit booking

The Bombay Stock Exchange benchmark Sensex gave up the huge early gains today to heavy profit booking towards the fag end and settled with muted gains of just 45 points.

The Sensex, tracking Asian indices which rallied today, had a rocking opening pushing up the index 230 points higher on all round buying, but could not sustain the lead and closed with a gain of just 45.42 points at 16,237.05.

The index touched a high of 16,423.23 points mid-day following president Pratibha Patil upped GDP growth to 9% for 2012, which in turn raised hopes that public spending would continue in the coming years and the budget would not a big dampener.

Over the past two sessions alone, the Sensex had shed 238 points or nearly 1.5%.

The wide-based NSE Nifty 50 too shaved off the huge gains in the morning half and closed with paltry 11.50 points gains to 4,856.40. After opening 67 points higher, the index touched the day's high of 4,912.05 on all round buying.

Among the 30 Sensex stocks, 18 closed higher and others ended in the red. The early rally was led by metals and IT.

The day's biggest gainer was the IT sector which rose 1.01%, followed by metal sector by 0.68%. Infosys rose Rs38.70 to Rs2,568.25. TCS gained Rs5.50 to Rs756.30 and Wipro by Rs1.55 to Rs667.55.

In the metal sector, Tata Steel rallied Rs9.45 to Rs572, Hindalco rose Rs3.90 to Rs153.65.

However, a steep fall in realty, consumer durables, healthcare, PSUs, refinery, power and FMCG sectors capped the gains.