Closing Bell: Indian market falls for the fourth day in a row

Domestic benchmark indices closed lower in a volatile trading session on Wednesday with the Nifty slipping below 17300.

The Indian equity market fell for the fourth session in a row on Wednesday amid profit booking witnessed across sectors. Big names in information technology and financial services such as Infosys, Bajaj Finance, HDFC Tata Consultancy Services and Bajaj Finserv were among the top drags in the markets today. During today's trade, the Sensex fell as much as 445 points at the day's lowest level and Nifty 50 briefly dropped below its important psychological level of 17,200.

At the closing bell on December 15, the Sensex was down 329.06 points or 0.57% at 57,788.03, and the Nifty was down 103.50 points or 0.60% at 17,221.40. About 1546 shares have advanced, 1574 shares declined, and 90 shares are unchanged.

Top losers from the Nifty were Bajaj Finance, Bajaj Finserv, Adani Ports, ITC and ONGC, while the top gainers of the day were Sun Pharma, Kotak Mahindra Bank, M&M, Hero MotoCorp and Maruti Suzuki.

On a sectoral basis, except Auto, all other sectoral indices ended in the red, with IT, metal, realty and PSU bank indices down 1% each. In the broader markets, the BSE midcap index fell 0.6% and smallcap index down 0.35%.

Today market participants were looking for clues on when the Fed will stop buying assets and start raising interest rates, while a rapid spread of the Omicron coronavirus variant also weighed on sentiment.

Among the trending shares, One97 Communications parent company of digital payments firm Paytm tanked as much as 13.22% as a lock-in period for its anchor investors ended on Wednesday. The stock touched an intraday low of Rs 1,297.70 in early trade.