The Sensex ended the day flat at 14 points, while the Nifty gained 4 points in trade. Infosys rallied sharply by almost 3 per cent after a few top broking firms upgraded the stock on hopes of better performance.

The top gainer from the Nifty were Ranbaxy which jumped more than 4 per cent after the company said it was resuming production of generic Lipitor for the US market.

Other top Nifty gainers were Power Grid, Tata Motors, Lupin Laboratories, HCL Tech, Wipro and TCS.

However, select mid caps saw a huge sell-off in trade with Core Education, Welspun, ABG Shipyard, Aanjaneya Lifesciences and Opto Circuits seeing a huge decline following reports that pleged shares of these companies have been sold off.

Non Banking Finance stocks rallied after the RBI announced guidelines for new banking licences. Among the stocks that rallied from the sector were L&T Finance Holdings, Mahindra and Mahindra Financial and Shriram Transport Finance.

Oil and gas stocks were among the top losers in trade today with ONGC, BPCL, HPCL all losing ground.

Realty stocks saw severe selling pressure with DLF, DB Realty, Indiabulls and HDIL dropping in trade.

PSU banking stocks that saw buying in early trade, however, ended the day with losses. PSU banks that closed in the red were Andhra Bank, Bank of Baroda, Oriental Bank, IOB and Union Bank of India.

Meanwhile, markets in Asia ended the day strong with most of the markets closing with gains. European markets were trading higher and were awaiting the outcome of elections in Italy. The German DAX, the French CAC and the UK's FTSE were all higher in trade.

GoodReturns.in