Real estate stocks led the front on Wednesday as traders continued to bid up construction companies in an otherwise dull market where volumes were missing. Local stocks ignored a strong close in most Asian markets as they took cues from flat to weak equities in Europe.

Trading action was concentrated in few sectors and that, too, mostly on the sell side. Bit gains were seen on capital goods companies, auto shares and fundamentally strong mid cap companies. Banking futures remained the favourite sell items along with FMCG counters and MNC companies in today's trade.

The Nifty shut shop at 8,193 points, mostly unchanged from its previous close. The index retraced from its intra-day high of 8,218 points

Here are the major highlights of Wednesday's trade:

* Real Estate stocks were on fire with their main index rising for the 7th session in a row. The NSE Realty Index traded at its highest level in nearly 2 months as heavy buying was seen in front line sectoral shares such as JP Associates, DLF, Indiabulls Real Estate and Sobha Developers. Eight out of 10 stocks making up the real estate index rose between 0.1-5.7 per cent.

* The Sensex closed with losses of 8 points at 26,635 points. Bharti Airtel was the top gainer. ICICI Bank was the top loser and HDFC was the most traded stock on the index.

* Bosch, Kotak Bank, Reliance Industries, ACC and Ambuja Cement fell 1.4-3.2 per cent and were among 24 shares that slipped on the Nifty.

* Bharti Infratel, Bharti Airtel, HCL Technologies, Bajaj Auto and BHEL rose between 2-3.2 per cent on the index and were among 27 gainers on the Nifty.

*Jubilant Lifesciences, Bharat Financials, Maruti and HDFC were the top traded shares by value on the NSE.

* Real estate stocks dominated the most active list of shares with hectic volume seen on IB Real Estate, HDIL and DLF apart from the daily presence of JP Associates and Unitech.

*Broader markets slipped with the Nifty 100, 200 and 500 indices ending marginally lower.

* All four banking benchmarks lost between 0.7-0.9 per cent. Metals and Pharma indices slipped as well while the IT index was the top gainer, up 1.3 per cent, apart from the Real Estate benchmark that surged 2.3 per cent.

* Bulls made their presence felt on stocks such as Titan, Ashok Leyland, NMDC, Indigo and Havells.

* Stocks that came under selling pressure included Cummins India, Hindustan Zinc, Divis Labs and housing finance companies LIC and Indiabulls.

* The most tracked benchmarks may have ended flat to negative, but bulls retained control of sentiment on Dalal Street where 935 shares gained versus 654 that fell.