Sensex, Nifty End Marginally Lower; Reliance Industries, Tata Steel Top Losers

The Indian equity benchmarks slipped for second straight session on Thursday dragged by losses Reliance Industries, Bajaj Finance, Tata Steel, Maruti Suzuki and Larsen & Toubro. However, the downside was capped owing to buying interest in technology heavyweights like Infosys, Tata Consultancy Services and HCL Technologies. For most part of the day, the benchmarks traded in a narrow range as futures and option contracts for the month of December expired. The Sensex traded in a band of 431 points and Nifty 50 index touched an intraday high of 17,264 and low of 17,146.

The Sensex fell 12 points to close at 57,794 and Nifty 50 index slipped 10 points to end at 17,204.

In December derivative series, Nifty fell 2 per cent and Sensex declined 1.7 per cent.

Sentiment has become risk averse on Dalal Street as investors are assessing the economic impact of Omicron variant of Coronavirus on the economy as many state governments in the country are imposing restrictions to control its spread, analysts said.

Eight of 15 sector gauges compiled by the National Stock Exchange ended higher led by the Nifty Oil & Gas index's over 1 per cent decline. Nifty Realty, PSU Bank, Metal and Auto indices also fell between 0.5-1.15 per cent.

On the other hand, Nifty IT, Pharma and Healthcare indices advanced between 0.4-1 per cent.

Mid- and small-cap shares ended mixed as Nifty Midcap 100 index fell 0.37 per cent while Nifty Smallcap 100 index advanced 0.24 per cent.

Bajaj Auto was top Nifty loser, the stock fell 1.9 per cent to close at Rs 3,201. Reliance Industries, JSW Steel, Tata Steel, Maruti Suzuki, UPL, Tata Motors, Bharat Petroleum, Indian Oil, Grasim Industries, Shree Cements, Bajaj Finance and Sun Pharma also fell between 0.6-1.6 per cent.

On the flipside, NTPC, IndusInd Bank, HCL Technologies, Titan, Cipla, Wipro, ONGC, Dr Reddy's Labs, Hindustan Unilever and Bharti Airtel were among the gainers.

The overall market breadth was positive as 1,849 shares ended higher while 1,510 closed lower on the BSE.