Closing Bell: Indices end marginally higher in a volatile trading session

Domestic equity bourses Sensex and Nifty after trading higher throughout the session lost most of the gains on the weekly expiry day.

After RBI raised the interest rates by 40 basis points (bps) on Wednesday, the US Fed on expected lines hiked the key interest rate by 50 bps. Globally, most stock markets gained after the Federal Reserve played down the chances of a bigger US interest rate hike soon.

Indian equity markets closed in the green today but were off their early highs on Thursday. After starting the day on a strong footing, the headline indices gave up most of their gains during late deals, dragged by banking, consumer goods and pharma shares. Owing to these developments Indian indices erased most of the intraday gains and ended on a flat note.

At the closing bell on May 5, the Sensex was up 33.20 points or 0.06% at 55,702.23, and the Nifty was up 5.10 points or 0.03% at 16,682.70. On the market breadth, around 1491 shares have advanced, 1771 shares declined, and 116 shares are unchanged.

Top losers of the day include IndusInd Bank, Tata Consumer Products, Britannia Industries, UltraTech Cement and Nestle India, while top gainers were Tech Mahindra, Hero MotoCorp, Infosys, HCL Technology and Wipro. In the trending stocks, Tech Mahindra was the top Nifty gainer as the scrip surged 4.22% to Rs 1,264.

On a sectoral basis, power, capital goods and IT indices rose 1-2% each. However, realty, FMCG and pharma indices fell 0.5-1.5%. In the broad markets, the BSE midcap and smallcap indices ended marginally lower.

In the currency market, the Indian rupee ended 16 paise higher at 76.26 per dollar against Wednesday’s close of 76.42.