Tracking lower opening of European equity markets, domestic bourses gave up initial gains and closed Thursday’s trading session in the negative zone with Midcap and Smallcap indices leading the declines.
The Sensex at the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) ended 145 points down at 28,840 and the Nifty at the National Stock Exchange (NSE) closed 46 points lower at 8,900.
In the broader markets, BSE Midcap and Smallcap indices plunged 1.4 per cent and 1.3 per cent respectively.
All the BSE sectoral indices, except the Auto index, closed in the red zone with Realty index leading the declines, down 4.3 per cent. Auto index closed 0.3 per cent higher.
Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth for the quarter ended December 31, 2016 contracted to 7 per cent, Central Statistics Office (CSO) said on Tuesday.
The third quarter number GDP numbers are an important indicator of how the economy reacted after demonetisation. In the quarter ended December 31, 2015 the GDP growth was 7.2 per cent.
On Wednesday, the Sensex had closed 241 points higher at 28,984 and the Nifty had closed 66 points up at 8,946.
Top gainers in the Sensex-30 pack: Tata Motors (up 2.7 per cent), Bajaj Auto (up 2.1 per cent), Hero Motocorp (up 1.4 per cent), TCS (up 0.9 per cent) and Wipro (up 0.4 per cent).
Top losers in the Sensex-30 pack: Adani Ports (down 3.1 per cent), Sun Pharma (down 2.6 per cent), NTPC (down 2.5 per cent), Bharti Airtel (down 2.1 per cent), and Dr Reddy’s Labs (down 2 per cent).
However, the Rupee was trading nine paise higher at 66.73 against the US Dollar.