In a roller-coaster trade, the benchmark Sensex on the Bombay Stock Exchange closed flat on Wednesday after two days of selling, though interest rate sensitive realty and banking shares made handsome gains.

The bellwether index closed at 8,747.43 points, up by a marginal gain of 8.19 points from its previous close.

Marketmen said there were intermittent bouts of buying by funds throughout the day but every surge was followed by profit selling.

They said gloomy outlook on economy continued to dominate and fears of contracting demand for services of outsourcing companies also loomed large.

IT stocks, led by Infosys Technologies suffered major losses on apprehensions that recession in the U S would impact the software export business. Indian software companies get nearly 50 per cent of their revenues from American markets.

The barometer after trading higher by nearly 115 points in the opening trade fell steeply barely one hour later to trade 106 points lower. And then throughout the session the index oscillated between positive and negative territories.

While profit selling pulled down the Sensex, brokers said the key index was up in opening trade on positive global cues.

The 30-share index moved between 8,601.41 and 8,854.81 points

The wide-based National Stock Exchange index Nifty, on the other hand, closed lower by 1.35 points at 2,656.45.

While the realty and banking indices rose on anticipation of fiscal and monetary package by the Centre to give a booster to the economy, IT and tech share were major losers.

However, the winner among the indices was the metal sector index which closed higher by 3.39 per cent at 4451.04 points with Tata Steel, Sterlite, NMDC Ltd and Jindal Steel gaining on fresh buying from investors.

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