New Delhi, Sep 12 (IANS): Nifty closed almost flat after opening higher on the 8th day of rise. Broad market sell-off has dented sentiments to some extent, says Deepak Jasani, Head of Retail Research, HDFC Securities.

While Nifty may not fall much in the near term, the broad market indices may take time to find a bottom. Nifty could remain in the 20110-19865 band for the near term, he added.

Broad market indices fell much more than the Nifty even as the advance decline ratio dipped sharply to 0.18:1, he added.

While most sectors indexes were down today, the Nifty Oil and Gas, Nifty Metal, and Nifty Energy were the top losers, down by 2.82 per cent, 2.67 per cent, and 2.49 per cent respectively, says Vaibhav Vidwani, Research Analyst, Bonanza Portfolio.

Many investors were invested in midcap and smallcap stocks due to their high return potential, which caused the stocks to become overvalued and lead to today's massive profit booking, he added.

L&T was one of the stocks which outperformed today, a day after the firm increased the floor price of its Rs 10,000-crore mega-buyback scheme by roughly 7 per cent to Rs 3,200 per share, shares of Larsen & Toubro gained 1.72 per cent and touched a record high of Rs 3,008. Top gainers on the Nifty included TCS, L&T, Infosys, Divis Labs and UltraTech Cement, while BPCL, Power Grid Corp, NTPC, Adani Enterprises and Coal India were among the top losers, he added.