Sensex, Midcap close lower; Dr Reddy#39;s, Idea Cellular top losers; D-Mart steals the show

Equity benchmarks as well as broader markets closed moderately lower amid consolidation on Tuesday as investors remained sideways in the absence of any significant trigger at global and domestic front. However, D-Mart hogged the limelight, rising more than 114 percent on listing day.

The 30-share BSE Sensex was down 33.29 points at 29,485.45 and the 50-share NSE Nifty declined 5.35 points to 9,121.50.

Experts feel the volatility is likely to continue before getting direction on either side. They expect the Nifty to be in a range of 9,000-9,200.

In a scenario where liquidity is good but there is a bit of uncertainty on interest rates and on how the rupee is likely to behave, the market could trade in a band of 8600 on the downside and 9600-9800 on the higher side in the next 3-6 months, Vineet Bhatnagar of PhillipCapital says.

Gautam Shah of JM Financial believes this is still a nascent stage of a bull market and sees no reason to book profits. He expects the Nifty at 9,500 in 4-6 weeks.

The broader markets underperformed benchmarks, with the BSE Midcap falling 0.45 percent on weak breadth. About 1690 shares declined against 1095 advancing shares on the exchange.

It was a day of Avenue Supermarts, the operator of retail chain D-Mart. The stock posted a whopping 114.30 percent gains on listing day, closing at Rs 640.75 against issue price of Rs 299 despite analysts feel the valuations are stretched. It crossed market capitalisation of Rs 40,000 crore during the day, which was much higher than five Nifty companies.

Telecom operator Idea Cellular fell for second consecutive session today, down nearly 5 percent on top of 10 percent correction in previous session on profit booking after it announced merger with Vodafone India.

Dr Reddy’s Labs was down 4 percent on likely delay in clearance from the US FDA for its oncology formulation site in Visakhapatnam, as 13 observations it received from the US regulator, on March 18, contained repeats from a 2015 warning letter.

Divi’s Labs tanked 20 percent after the US health regulator issued an import alert 66-40 on products manufactured at Vizag Unit-II. The USFDA exempted 10 products from this import alert.

Sun Pharma shares were lower by a percent after a media report indicated that company and Mylan faced price fixing charges with respect to generic asthma drug in USA.

ITC, Infosys and ONGC were biggest gainers among largecaps, up 1-2 percent whereas Reliance Industries, Axis Bank, ICICI Bank, Maruti Suzuki and Asian Paints fell 1-3 percent.

In broader space, IL&FS Engineering gained 3 percent on letter of intent for rural electrification works worth Rs 222.7 crore in Jharkhand while C&C Construction was locked at 5 percent upper circuit on two government orders worth Rs 1,518 crore and Rs 1,493.4 crore.