FIRST TRADE: Bulls take a breather after record rally; Sensex, Nifty trade flat with negative bias

Stock market today: After smashing one record after another, the domestic equity market opened on a muted note on Wednesday amid subdued global cues and profit-booking in recent outperforming counters. At the time of writing this news, the S&P BSE Sensex was trading at 65,441.86 levels, down 37 points, or 0.06 per cent while the NSE's Nifty traded at 19,378.45 levels, down 10.55 points, or 0.05 per cent.

"Markets may eke out small gains in early trades Wednesday amid optimism in the Gift Nifty index, but a choppy intra-day ride cannot be ruled out as a weakness in other Asian indices could prompt investors to exercise caution. The market has already run up sharply to record highs in the last few sessions on the back of strong FII inflows. Investors will be eyeing the US FOMC Minutes to be released later today. Amongst sectors, there is a bright chance that the Nifty IT Index is likely to be outperformed," said Prashanth Tapse, Senior VP (Research), Mehta Equities Ltd.

STOCKS IN NEWS

The HDFC duo slipped in trade and were the top losers on the benchmark index Sensex. Both stocks were trading over 2 per cent lower. Wipro, RIL, and Bajaj Finserve were the other top losers on the 30-share index. On the other hand, IndusInd Bank (up 2 per cent) was the biggest gainer on the Sensex, followed by ICICI Bank, and Asian Paints.

BROADER MARKET INDICES

The S&P BSE MidCap index was trading 0.41 per cent higher at 28,917.27 levels, while the S&P BSE SmallCap index was trading at 32,948.01 points, up 0.44 per cent.