Benchmark indices remained extremely volatile in trade this week, with Monday and Tuesday seeing an extension of the earlier week's fall, while Wednesday and Thursday saw solid recovery.

Friday was a lacklustre day for the markets, with the indices trading in a very narrow range. Overall, because of the sharp rally, during mid-week, the Sensex and the Nifty ended the week higher.

Going ahead, we are likely to see some stability being restored. Next week it is likely that the markets would move in a more narrow range, ahead of the announcement of the polling dates for the Lok Sabha elections.

An interesting feature of this week was the huge rally in some beaten down stocks like IndiaBulls Housing Finance, DHFL, Reliance Capital, IndiaBulls Real Estate, Reliance Infrastructure etc. In fact, the dividend yield on some of these stocks had become so attractive, that their returns were even superior to bank deposits.

Metal stocks like Vedanta and Tata Steel too saw a huge uptick in their stock prices. Reliance Nippon AMC was the star in trade this week as the shares rallied 16 percent after Reliance Capital invited partner Nippon Life Insurance Company Ltd to acquire stake in Reliance Nippon Life AMC.

This week, there was some selling pressure from Foreign Portfolio Investors, while domestic institutions were seen to have lent a helping hand to the markets.

Global cues were solid this week, with the Dow Jones and the S&P 500 seeing solid gains. For the Indian markets to sustain, there would need to be further buying support for the markets. Indian markets are expected to see tremendous volatility in the next few weeks, as we head into elections. Marketmen are finding it increasingly difficult to predict the exact election outcome. Some are now predicting a Congress government with help from Coalition parties. It's probably a good time to stay on the sidelines and with a decent amount of cash.

It has been more than a year since the Nifty hit the 11,000 points mark. We are still at the same level (in fact 2.5 per cent lower). It is going to be an uphill task for the markets to stage a solid recovery from here, unless, we have the election results behind us. In fact, for the last 2-3 weeks, Indian markets have underperformed their global peers, as nobody wants to take a risk. All the investment seems to going into safe haven stocks like the HDFC twins, Reliance Industries, TCS, Infosys and the FMCG space.