Sensex ends in red; IT, banking, auto see profit booking

After last week's big rally, the Sensex ended in the red on Monday while the Nifty was flat . At 15.57 hrs IST, the Sensex was down 37.02 points at 19646.21 and the Nifty declined 3.35 points at 5942.35. About 1380 shares advanced, 1479 shares declined, and 649 shares remain unchanged.

The market would now be focusing on the factory output data which will be announced on Tuesday and inflation on Thursday. These may set expectations ahead of the central bank's monetary policy decision on March 19.

"One should avoid trading the Bank Nifty and the Nifty even for a carry forward position because choppiness could creep into the market tomorrow," recommended technical analyst Sudarshan Sukhani of s2analytics.com

Engineering company Siemens was the top gainer on the Sensex rising more than 5 percent. The stock shot up more than 7 percent to touch an intraday of Rs 571. DLF (2.97%), Tata Power (2.38%), HDFC (2.26%) and Asian Paints (1.93%) were the other gainers.

On the other hand, profit booking was seen in IT, banking, capital good and auto stocks. Hero Motocorp was the top loser on the Sensex, it fell 2.51%. Wipro (1.35%), Bajaj Auto (1.35%), Jindal Steel (1.24%) and TCS (1.05%) were the other losers.

Meanwhile, there was some respite on the macro front, trade deficit narrowed to USD 14.92 billion in February on the back of a 4.3 percent y-o-y jump in exports. Import growth also slowed to 2.6 percent, but crude oil and gold imports continued to remain high. The Indian currency touched 54.44 per USD dollar.