The Indian stock market ended flat on Wednesday, with investors, looking ahead to the outcome of the U.S. Federal Reserve's monetary policy meeting, turning cautious and choosing to trim down positions. Earlier, the market got off to a firm start and stayed notably up in positive territory for a long time, tracking gains in most of the markets across the Asian region after the Bank of Japan decided to modify its policy framework to achieve the inflation target at the earliest possible time. The Japanese central bank said it will control short-term and long-term interest rates, besides expanding the monetary base until inflation exceeds 2%. The bank said it will continue with its negative interest rate of -1% to the policy rate balances in current accounts of financial institutions. As stocks gave up gains in late afternoon trade, the BSE benchmark Sensex declined to 28,462.33 from the day's high of 28,689.36, before eventually closing at 28,507.42 with a loss of 15.78 points or 0.06%. The Nifty50 of the National Stock Exchange ended up 1.25 points or 0.01% at 8777.15, after scaling a high of 8826.85 intraday. In the forex market, the rupee was trading at 67.03 against the U.S. dollar around late afternoon, little changed from its previous close of 67.02. Earlier, after opening at 67.00 a dollar, the rupee declined to a low of 67.14, a three-week low. In a significant move, the Union Cabinet today approved the merger of railway budget with the general budget ending nearly hundred-year old practice of having two separate budgets and agreed, in principle, to advance the presentation of the budget from late February. Following this development, rail related stocks attracted attention today. Telecom and consumer durables stocks closed higher. FMCG stocks were weak. Metal, oil, IT, automobile, bank, capital goods, power and realty stocks failed to hold gains and ended on a mixed note. Midcap and smallcap stocks too closed mixed. Among Sensex stocks, Tata Steel and Hindustan Unilever gained about 1% each. Axis Bank, Bharti Airtel, Wipro, Infosys, Bajaj Auto, Tata Motors and HDFC Bank closed higher by 0.4% - 0.8%. Power Grid Corporation, ITC, State Bank of India, ICICI Bank and ONGC closed lower by 0.6% - 1.5%. Bharti Infratel, the top gainer in the Nifty index, moved up 4.65%. Eicher Motors gained 3.3% and Hindalco ended 2.6% up. Yes Bank, Idea Cellular and Tata Power closed with modest gains. Bank of Baroda, Ambuja Cements, BHEL, UltraTech Cement, Kotak Bank and ACC closed lower by 0.3% - 1.6%. Vardhman Textiles rose sharply after the company sait that its board will meet later this week to consider a share buy-back proposal. Essel Propack hit a new high after the company said that its wholly-owned subsidiary in Mauritius, Lamitube Technologies Limited, will acquire 75.1% stake in Essel Deutschland Gmbh& Co. KG, Germany, a joint venture in which Lamitube already holds 24.9% stake. Flex Industries, MCX, Indoco Remedies, Inox Leisure, Shriram EPC, IRB Infrastructure, NBCC and TeamLease Services also saw some strong buying on stock specific news. The market breadth was slightly positive. Out of 2924 stocks traded on BSE, 1413 stocks moved up. 1312 stocks declined and 199 stocks ended flat. It is widely expected that the U.S. Federal Reserve will keep its benchmark interest rate unchanged at the conclusion of its two-day policy meeting today, given recent weak economic data. The Fed had left the target range for its federal funds rate unchanged at 0.25% to 0.5% for the fifth time during its July 2016 meeting. Meanwhile, in the IPO market, the 13.23 crore shares offer from ICICI Prudential Life Insurance was subscribed nearly 10 times till the penultimate hour on the final day.
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