Sharp fall in the rupee had the stock markets closing flat on Monday.
The Nifty was up 0.30 per cent or 15 points to close at 4,906 while the Sensex rose by 0.19 per cent or 31 points to close at 16,184. While banks, realty and capital goods sector stocks performed well at the bourses, FMCG and IT stocks took a beating.
According to market reports, rupee was moving towards all-time low of 54.89 a dollar and had depreciated by 43 paise or 0.78 per cent to 54.85 a dollar, at the time of closing of Indian equities.
Mr Alex K Mathews, Head Technical and Derivatives Research, Geojit BNP Paribas Financial Services said: “The market witnessed heavy selling pressure in the second half of trade with the rupee falling to 54.95 at one point in intra-day trade. It is expected to fall further between 56 and go going forward with no measures coming forth from the government to arrest its slide.”
“There was buying due to short covering in banking stocks as results posted by SBI were above expectations and helped get investors attention. There was also value buying in stocks such as BHEL and L&T owing to announcement of new contracts by them,” he added.
Volatility was up, with the India Vix closing almost 1.57 per cent up at 23.92.
Tata Power, Bank of Baroda, Reliance Infrastructure, SBI and BHEL were the top Nifty gainers while Wipro, ITC, Infosys, HUL and Sterlite were the losers on the Nifty.