Sensex ends 76 points lower amid late sell-off; banking, auto shares top losers

Benchmark indices ended lower after trading with massive gains during the majority of session today. Sensex crashed nearly 900 points from the day's peak to close Friday's highly volatile session 77 points lower at 57,200. The late sell off was triggered by mainly in banking and auto shares.

Starting off on a high note,  Sensex rallied to trade briefly above the key 58,000-level in afternoon trade, before plunging to a low of 57,119.28. The index finally closed 76.71 points or 0.13 per cent lower at 57,200.23 amid highly volatile trade. Nifty too moved between gains and losses before closing 8.20 points or 0.05 per cent lower at 17,101.95. Maruti, Tech Mahindra, PowerGrid, ICICI Bank, Axis Bank and SBI - were the top Sensex losers falling up to 3 per cent. Vinod Nair, Head of Research at Geojit Financial Services, said, ''After the decent opening post yesterday's weak closing, domestic bourses again staged a quick sell-off, tracking weak European trend. Policy tightening by the US Fed and rising geopolitical tensions in Ukraine coloured global sentiments.

The broad market ended mixed considering IT, realty and mid and smallcaps rebounded after continuous heavy-selling this week, he added.

BSE mid cap and small cap indices rose 244 points and 306 points, respectively. Banking and auto shares were the top losers with BSE bankex and auto indices falling 326 and 166 points, respectively. Market cap of BSE-listed firms rose to Rs 261.07 lakh crore. Market breadth was positive with 1947 stocks ending higher against 1,417 stocks closing lower on BSE. 94 shares were unchanged.

Elsewhere in Asia, bourses saw mixed trading pattern, as barring Japan and Korea all logged losses.

Meanwhile, international oil benchmark Brent crude eased 0.42 per cent to USD 89.70 per barrel.

Foreign institutional investors (FIIs) remained net sellers in the capital markets, offloading shares worth Rs 6,266.75 crore on Thursday, as per official exchange data.