Indian stocks failed to keep up with the previous session's gains as they traded largely steady with movement on both sides on Wednesday.

At 12.30 pm, the benchmark indices - Sensex and Nifty - were 0.1 per cent lower each. The marginal downside pressure could be linked to consumer inflation in the US and India.

"The much awaited US CPI inflation for January has come at 6.4 per cent YoY but is up by 0.5 per cent MoM. The takeaway from this data is that while the disinflationary process is on track, it is very slow. This means the Fed might hike rates again and the rates might remain higher for a longer period of time," said VK Vijayakumar, Chief Investment Strategist at Geojit Financial Services.

High-quality banking stocks have more room to go higher and IT, select autos and capital goods too look strong, Vijayakumar said.

Retail inflation in India again breached RBI's upper tolerance band in the month of January 2023, with the Consumer Price Index at 6.52 per cent. India's retail inflation was above RBI's six per cent target for three consecutive quarters and had managed to fall back to the RBI's comfort zone only in November 2022.

US stocks ended mixed on Tuesday, with the Nasdaq Composite recouping losses and outperforming the rest of the market after January's consumer-price index showed inflation slowed for a seventh straight month, but not as quickly as economists had expected, said Deepak Jasani, Head of Retail Research at HDFC securities.

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