Closing Bell: Indian market declines amid weakness across sectors, Nifty falls below 17600

Domestic equity bourses Sensex and Nifty continued to fall for a second straight session in a holiday-truncated week, amid weakness in most sectors. Oil & Gas, IT and metal stocks were the biggest drags on the headline indices.

The Indian equity market extended its fall to the second straight session on Tuesday, dragged by metal and information technology (IT) stocks as investors awaited the retail inflation data for last month. Market participants also turned cautious with the onset of the earnings season. Index heavyweight Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) started the Q4 earnings season on Monday, posting a higher profit due to large deal signings.

At the closing bell on April 12, the Sensex was down 388.20 points or 0.66% at 58,576.37, and the Nifty was down 144.70 points or 0.82% at 17,530.30. On the market breadth, around 1146 shares have advanced, 2193 shares declined, and 90 shares are unchanged.

Top Nifty losers include Hindalco Industries, Coal India, Grasim Industries, Tata Motors and Tata Steel, while Axis Bank, Kotak Mahindra Bank, Power Grid Corporation, SBI Life Insurance and Maruti Suzuki were the top Nifty gainers. Among the top laggards, Hindalco was the top Nifty loser as the stock lost 5.77% to Rs 543.10.

In the sectors, except bank, all other sectoral indices closed in the red with IT, metal, realty, oil & gas and capital goods indices down 1-3%. In the broad market, the BSE midcap and smallcap indices lost over 1% each.

Market participants lost Rs 3.2 lakh crore in wealth as the market capitalization of BSE-listed companies declined to Rs 271.9 lakh crore. In other news, worries about the Russia-Ukraine war and rising COVID infection in China also remained on investor's radar.