Indices turn flat after opening in green, Nifty holds 18,300; L&T slips over 4%

After opening in the green, the market turned flat amid selling in heavyweights such as L&T and Dr Reddy's as the companies failed to cheer investors with their March quarter numbers. While L&T's both bottom line and top line missed analysts' expectations, Dr Reddy's missed revenue estimates due to lower US generic sales. Its supernormal profit was on a lower base. 

At the time of writing this news, the S&P BSE Sensex traded flat at 61,982.35 while the NSE's Nifty quoted at 18,318. Tech Mahindra (up 1 per cent) was the top gainer on the index, followed by NTPC and Asian Paints. On the flip side, L&T was the biggest laggard, followed by ITC, and Bharti Airtel. The second-rung stocks were performing better than the large caps. The S&P BSE MidCap index was up 0.33 per cent to 26,277.93 levels while the S&P BSE SmallCap index was trading 0.64 per cent higher at 29,628.66 points.

Dr V K Vijayakumar, Chief Investment Strategist at Geojit Financial Services, said, "Two important news that market players have been closely monitoring - the US inflation print and Karnataka exit poll results - that came yesterday, are unlikely to impact the market significantly. Both were somewhat on the expected lines. The US CPI inflation has eased to 4.9 per cent YoY as the markets expected and the exit polls indicate a slight edge for the Congress, which also is not surprising. The decline in bond yields in the US after the release of inflation data indicates that the market expects the Fed to pause in June."

An important data from the Q4 results yesterday is the robust order inflows for L&T. This indicates that the capex in the economy is gaining momentum. The capital goods segment will do well, going forward. FPI inflows continue unabated touching Rs 19,865 crore in May as per depository data. This will impart resilience to the market even if there is profit booking, the analyst said.