Autos, RIL set-off losses in banks; Sensex dips 20 pts, Nifty holds 15,100

Stock market updates: Brisk-buying in the last hour of trade helped domestic equity markets end flat on Wednesday amid losses in financial and select IT stocks. The frontline S&P BSE Sensex and the Nifty50 indices breached below their psychological levels of 51,000 and 15,000 to hit an intra-day low of 50,846 and 14,977, respectively.

Recovering from day's low, the Sensex index settled at 51,309 levels on the BSE, down 20 points or 0.04 per cent. Bharti Airtel (down 1.5 per cent), Axis Bank, HDFC Bank, ONGC, PowerGrid, and L&T were the top laggards on the index. Weightage-wise, HDFC Bank, Infosys, ICICI Bank, Axis Bank, and L&T accounted for the maximum losses.

That said, gains in Bajaj Finserv, M&M, Bajaj Finance, Titan, TCS, and Reliance Industries, all up between 1.2 per cent and 3 per cent, trimmed losses.

NSE's Nifty50, on the other hand, closed 3 points, or 0.02 per cent, lower at 15,106.5 levels with 22 of the 50 constituents ending the day in the red.

The broader markets, however, bucked the trend and ended higher today. The S&P BSE MidCap and SmallCap indices added 0.7 per cent and 0.4 per cent, respectively at close.

Sectoral indices on the NSE ended mixed on Wednesday. The Nifty Realty index closed 1.6 per cent higher, followed by gains in the Nifty Pharma and Auto indices, up around 1 per cent each. On the downside, the Nifty Bank and the Nifty Private Bank indices ended 0.7 per cent down.

Global markets

World shares rose to new all-time highs and European indexes strengthened, with market sentiment generally upbeat. In Europe, The STOXX 600 index rose 0.3 per cent, while German’s DAX rose 0.1 per cent.

Earlier in Asia, Japan's Nikkei added 0.2 per cent, Hong Kong's Hang Seng gained 1.2 per cent, and South Korea's Kospi advanced 0.5 per cent.

(With inputs from Reuters)