The markets switched into a healthy, consolidation gear post the strong gains registered last week.
The Sensex clawed its way back above the psychological 17k mark, albeit after an intra-day blip, to end at 17,025, lower by 57 points and the Nifty shut shop at 5118, down 14 points.
The midcap and smallcap indices also ended listlessly at 6189 and 6922 respectively.
The benchmark indices had hit the high notes last week, notching gains of around 5% to register the best week in the past six weeks.
The IT major Infosys had set the tone by raising its full-year guidance and RIL added further fuel to the rally in anticipation of a good set of numbers.
But the short-lived rally back home seems to have fizzled out atleast for now, in contrast with the sustained strength being exhibited by the global bourses, in the absence of any follow-up buying during the first session of the week.
On the global front, the Nikkei average jumped to a six-week high of 8871, up 131 points.
Peers across Hong Kong, Seoul and Taiwan rose in tandem to add in the region of 1-2% each.
And the FTSE, CAC and DAX followed suit to lock in similar gains.
Auto stocks called the shots in today's session.
Tata Motors vroomed by 4.5% at Rs 188 on the BSE after its global sales rose 24% to 1,07,258 units in Q2 September 2011 over Q2 September 2010.
The auto major had zoomed over 13% in the previous week. Maruti Suzuki recovered from 52-week lows touched earlier in the session on resuming partial production at its Manesar plant.
The stock raced ahead by 2.3% at Rs 1,053.
And Bajaj Auto gained 1.2% at Rs 1650.
The banking stocks also extended recent gains triggered by hopes that a slowing economy could prompt the RBI to pause its rate hikes.
ICICI Bank gained 0.8% at Rs 898 and HDFC Bank added 0.7% at Rs 477, SBI took off from where it left last week, strengthening by 0.4% at Rs 1891.
Onelife Captial Advisors made a good debut to end Day 1 at Rs 145, an 32% premium against its issue price of Rs 110 on the National Stock Exchange.
The stock had opened at par and hit a high of Rs 123.70.
On the other hand, RIL declined by 3.8% at Rs 833 on news reports that it will halt drilling because of a review on the internal valuations of its exploration activity by the government.
On Saturday, the oil & gas conglomerate had reported a 16% jump in net profit at Rs 5703 crore on 34.73% rise in turnover to Rs 80790 crore in Q2 September 2011 over Q2 September 2010.
IT stocks saw selective profit-booking after leading the upmove last week. Wiprop shed 1.7% at Rs 356 and TCS lost 1.3% at Rs 1119 ahead of its numbers to be declared later in the day.
However, Infosys made good its intra-day losses towards the close of trade to end marginally in the green at Rs 2747. Infosys had spurted 9.5% last week post it Q2 numbers.
Among the major companies that announced their results during the day, HDFC ended firm at Rs 672, up 0.9%, after reporting a growth of 20.2% in net profit of Rs 971 crore for the quarter ended September 2011 as against Rs 807.5 crore in same quarter the previous year. Zee Entertainment is up 1.1% at 113 after posting a growth of 23% in net profit for the second quarter ended September, 2011, at Rs 160 crore.
The market breadth was weak. Out of 2873 stocks traded on the BSE, there were 1311 advancing stocks as against 1446 declines.
