Markets end flat amid volatile trade

Benchmark share indices ended flat amid a volatile trading session on Tuesday as traders rolled over positions from the near-month May series to June. The May derivative contracts expire on Thursday.

The 30-share Sensex provisionally ended up 10 points at  16,427 and the 50-share Nifty ended down 1.50 points at 4,984.

Markets have come off their day highs as investors booked profits at higher levels with the Nifty surpassing 5,000 levels since early trades. Gains were led by software shares, index heavyweight Reliance Industries and select bank shares.

At 2:20pm the Sensex was up 55 points at 16,472 after touching an intra-day high of 16,544 and the Nifty was up 14 points at 5,000 after touching a high of 5,020.

Software shares were up after worries over political uncertainty in Greece eased on reports which said that the opinion polls are indicating victory for the New Democracy party, which is in favour of a bail-out, in the Greek general re-election to be held next month. The euro-zone is the second largest revenue generator for Indian software exporters after the US. Infosys and TCS were both up over 1 per cent each.

Index heavyweight Reliance Industries gained 0.6% at Rs 705 after global investment bank Morgan Stanley upgraded the company to "equal-weight" from "underweight", maintaining its target price at Rs 703, citing attractive valuations.
Despite Morgan Stanley's "unconstructive" view on Reliance's core business, bank says Reliance is trading at multi-year lows, making its valuations "compelling."

Among bank shares, India's largest lender SBI continues to witness value buying and was up 0.7% at Rs 2,115 after the bank posted better-than-expected results for the fourth quarter eased worries over credit growth and non-performing assets in the banking sector. Among the private sector banks, ICICI Bank was up 0.4% and HDFC Bank was marginally up.

ONGC was up 1% ahead of its fourth quarter results today."We expect ONGC to report at PAT of Rs 35.9 billion (v/s adjusted PAT of Rs 25.7 billion in 4QFY11 and Rs 46.4 billion in 3QFY12). We estimate EBITDA at Rs 91.9 billion (up 26.6% Y-o-Y and down 14% Q-o-Q," Motilal Oswal Securities said in its results preview.

Mobile phone service providers were trading weak after global investment bank Morgan Stanley downgraded its view on India's telecom sector to "in-line" from "attractive", citing increased regulatory risks tied to the spectrum auction, and "relatively weaker" 3G outlook.Bharti Airtel was down 0.4% at Rs 301 while Idea Cellular and Reliance Communications were both down nearly 1% each.

Among other shares, Ajanta Pharma has rallied over 5% to Rs 712, its lifetime high, after the promoter acquired almost 1% stake in the company through open market purchases. Gabs Investments Pvt Ltd, one of its promoters has acquired 115,431 shares representing 0.98% stake in the company via creeping acquisition route since April, according to disclosure made by the company on Monday. The promoters hiked their stake by 3.31% to 70.13% in the last financial year ended March 2012.

The broader markets were marginally up in late noon trades. The market breadth was positive with 1,314 gainers and 1,203 losers on the BSE.