The Sensex and the Nifty ended the session marginally in the green as the Reserve Bank of India, in its first bi-monthly monetary policy statement for 2014-15, kept the repo rate unchanged at 8 per cent and other policy instruments such as cash reserve ratio unchanged at 4 per cent.
Brokers said the RBI’s decision to keep the interest rates unchanged was largely in line with investor expectations and failed to have any immediate effect.
The 30-share BSE index Sensex was up 60.17 points or 0.27 per cent at 22,446.44 and the 50-share NSE index Nifty was up 16.85 points or 0.25 per cent at 6,721.05.
Among BSE sectoral indices, banking, realty and capital goods fell the most by 1.18 per cent, 0.85 per cent and 0.32 per cent, respectively. On the other hand, IT, consumer durables and TECk indices remained investors' favourite and were up 1.65 per cent, 1.33 per cent and 1.27 per cent, respectively.
Wipro, TCS, SSLT, Tata Steel and M&M were the top five Sensex gainers, while the top five losers were Hindalco, Maruti, ICICI Bank, HDFC Bank and BHEL.
Asian stocks swung between gains and losses as investors weighed reports on China’s manufacturing that pointed to weakness in the world’s second-biggest economy.
European indices FTSE-100, DAX and CAC-40 were in the green.