Stock markets belled the day on a flat note accompanying feebleness in the worldwide markets after S&P's demoted the US growth viewpoint.

Banking scrips were topping the gaining charts whereas real estate and automobile scrips remained down.

The broad-based Nifty stood at 5726, down 4 points, and the 30-share index Sensex dropped 10 points to trade 19,078.

US stock markets overnight witnessed the worst sell-off in a month after S&P's altered its growth viewpoint on the US to pessimistic owing to growing arrears.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average, the Standard & Poor's 500 Index and the Nasdaq Composite remained down by 1.1% each.

Asian bourses were also heading the losers' charts during early trades.

Japan's Nikkei Stock Average slipped 1.5% owing to heavy selling action in automobile and tech scrips. Hang Seng fell 1.3% after crude oil rates declined in an aggressive manner dragging energy scrips.

Shanghai Composite remained down by 1.5%. South Korea's Kospi Composite dangled 1%, Taiwan's weighted index shed 1.2% and Singapore's Strait Times was down by 0.9%.

On the other hand, India bourses recorded losses on yesterday following fears that companies may not meet up their earnings growth projections and high inflationary standars may prompt the central banking institution to increase rates next month.

In its weekly report, PINC Research stated, "Nifty may continue to vacillate in a trading range and remain volatile. Only if Nifty decisively breaches the 5930 mark which is the resistance for the trend line, there could be further upside."

Real estate scrips were topping the losing charts, the index declined 0.6%. Indiabulls Real Estate, Parsvnath Developers and DB Realty were the top losers under this section. The banking scrips remained on top.

The major gainers on the Sensex included HDFC Bank, TCS and RCom. In contrast, the major losers list consisted of Hero Honda, ONGC and ITC.

The midcap and smallcap indices remained up by 0.3% each.