Indian benchmark indices failed to hold intraday gains and ended marginally lower in a volatile session on Wednesday.

At close, Sensex was down 167.71 points or 0.21% at 81,467.10, and the Nifty was down 31.20 points or 0.12% at 24,982.

Advertisement

On Nifty, 27 closed in the positive territory. Cipla led the way rising by 2.4 per cent. Trent, Tata Motors, State Bank of India, Maruti Suzuki, Tech Mahindra, Shriram Finance, Bajaj Finance, Bajaj Finserv and Axis Bank, all of which finished the session with gains exceeding 1.5%.

Nestle, Reliance Industries, ONGC, HUL were on the losing side.

BSE Midcap and Smallcap indices up more than 1% each. The overall market capitalisation of the firms listed on the BSE rose to nearly Rs 462.2 lakh crore from Rs 459.5 lakh crore in the previous session.

On BSE, over 180 stocks touched their 52-high. These included Akzo Nobel, Bosch, Cipla, Coforge, Divis Labs, Dixon Technologies, Glenmark Pharma, Hitachi Energy, Infosys, Ipca Labs, Lloyds Metals, MCX India, Page Industries, Polycab India, Symphony, Torrent Pharma, Torrent Power, Trent among others.

Among the sectors, all indices ended in the green with pharma, power, realty up 1-2%. Only FMCG (1.3%) and oil & gas (0.6%) were on the downside.

Shares of ONGC fell 2% after Crude oil futures fell more than 4% on Tuesday.

Vodafone Idea shares fell around 3% as investors rushed to book profits.

JK Cement shares slipped 2% on the back of a spike in short positions in the counter.

Nifty Midcap 100 index closed with a gain of 1%, finishing at 59,107 points, while the Nifty Smallcap 100 index rose by 1.33% to end at 18,864 points.

On the global landscape, China’s stocks plunged and were poised to snap a 10-day winning streak after officials failed to inspire confidence in stimulus plans intended to revive the economy.

Shanghai Composite index fell over 7% while the blue-chip CSI300 index also dropped 6.9%.

Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index is one of the best-performing major global markets this year. It was down 2.9% after starting the day higher.