The markets consolidated and ended on an extremely flat note ahead of the credit policy. The Asian markets ended flat to positive. The Shanghai Composite was up 3.5% while the Nikkie ended on a flat note

Among the major losers were FMCG, pharma, sugar and cement stocks. Power, metal and telecom stocks were gainers in today’s rally. Bank of India and South Indian Bank came out with strong set of numbers today. The BSE midcap and smallcap indices also ended flat and the breath was marginally in favour of declines.

Tata Steel, Reliance Energy and Reliance Communications were the top gainers on the BSE while ITC, HLL and Bajaj Auto were the major losers.

Neeraj Deewan, Director, Quantum Securities said, “The market is undecided before the credit policy to be announced tomorrow. There is not too much of a change in local cues like interest rates and inflation, so the market is a little jittery and they want to wait plus this is a very good level. The market has gone up from 12,300-12,500 levels to this level in good time. Book some profits and keep some cash in hand, and see how the market pans out in a couple of days or in the next one or two weeks,” he said.

He does not see too much of an upside in the near term. “I don’t see too much of an upside, till local factors like interest rates and inflation settle down, because there is more fear right now.

The rally, which happened right now, was because we were at a low level, good global cues and corporate results. In future, there is no immediate trigger for the market. Even if other thing settle down, the market should consolidate at these levels for some more time before it touches new highs and goes up from here,” Deewan said

Kalpesh Parekh, Head-Insititutional Sales at ASK Raymond James, said, “To some extent people are adopting a wait-and-watch strategy because they would not like to take a big position for tomorrow as it would be an unpredictable day. There are two schools of thought going on; one school of thought is suggesting that he will not touch interest rate or anything as such, but another school of thought is looking at inflation data and you may get a surprising shock in the form of interest rate, CRR or something. It is just a mixed bag. People are not ready to take that big a position either way as such. It's like taking a break before the big F&O expiry happening on Thursday."

He expects some consolidation and further correction going ahead. "

“There will be a lot of action happening till the F&O expiry day. But thereafter, the market will consolidate and probably you can see some amount of healthy correction also coming in because we are not accustomed to a one-sided rally in recent times. So you may see a correction coming in before we go into the in future," Parekh said.