Closing Bell: Indian market snaps two-day winning run, Nifty holds 17100

Domestic equity benchmarks fell amid choppy trade to start the week as investors returned to trade after a long weekend.

The Indian equity benchmarks fell on Monday, snapping a sharp two-day rally as the continued conflict in Ukraine pushed oil prices higher. Today the crude prices surged above USD 110 a barrel mark, fanning fears of higher inflation. Selling in financial, IT and oil & gas shares dragged the headline indices lower though gains in metal shares provided some support. Thus, the benchmark indices ended the session on March 21 deep in the red.

At the closing bell, the Sensex fell 571.44 points or 0.99% at 57292.49, and the Nifty was down 69.40 points or 0.98% at 17117.60. On the market breadth, around 1516 shares have advanced, 1919 shares declined, and 140 shares are unchanged.

On the sectoral front, auto, banks, realty and power lost over 1% each while buying was seen in metal names. In the broad markets, the midcap index shed 0.5% while the smallcap index added over 0.5%.

In the top Nifty losers, Britannia was the top laggard as the stock cracked 3.46% to Rs 3,240. Grasim, Tata Consumer Products, Shree Cement and SBI Life were also among the losers.

On the 30-share BSE index, PowerGrid, Asian Paints, UltraTech Cement, Nestle India, Hindustan Unilever, HCL Tech, SBI and Bharti Airtel were among the top losers.

Top gainers in a volatile trade include Sun Pharma, HDFC Bank, Maruti Suzuki India, Titan and NTPC settled in the green.

Shares of ONGC gained 1.3% today. Global oil benchmark Brent futures topped the USD 110 a barrel mark once again amid tight supplies.

The India VIX also called the fear index, jumped as much as 9.3% to 24.7 during the session.