Mumbai, Dec 30 (IANS): Indian markets on Monday closed on a flat note as heavyweights like ICICI Bank, SBI, TCS, Hindustan Uniliver and SBI ended in the red. The benchmark Sensex closed 17 points lower at 41,558, while the Nifty closed higher by 14.80 points at 12,260.60.

"Market was range bound, premium valuation and lack of fresh triggers influenced investors to take cautious approach on heavyweights," said Vinod Nair, Head of Research at Geojit Financial Services.

Nair added that reasonable valuation of mid and small caps attracted inflows leading to outperformance in the broad market. We expect this polarized valuation not to sustain, there could be shift of money from the over-valued large caps to mid-caps in 2020.

The top gainers on the BSE were Nestle, Hero Moto Corp, Mahindra and Mahindra, Bharti Airtel and Tata Steel.

Shrikant Chouhan of Kotak Securities said auto and metal companies did extremely well throughout the session. These indices closed almost 1.25 per cent higher as compared to nominal gains of Nifty and Sensex. Financials and energy stocks remained subdued.

"Also, there was hardly any significant news flow on the domestic front. However, in the coming days the focus will remain on monthly numbers from auto companies and on the GDP numbers," Chouhan added.