Closing Bell: Sensex, Nifty manages to close higher on a volatile trading day

Domestic bourses halted the four-day losing streak on Thursday and closed in positive territory led by gains in IT names.

The Indian equity market snapped its four-day losing streak led by gains in heavyweights like Infosys, Bajaj Finance, Reliance Industries, Tata Consultancy Services, Titan and HCL Technologies. For most of the day, the benchmarks fluctuated between gains and losses owing to some volatility due to the weekly expiry of index futures and options contracts. During today's trade, the Sensex moved in the range of 650 points and the Nifty 50 index touched an intraday high of 17,379.35 and low of 17,195.

At the closing bell on December 16, the Sensex was up 113.11 points or 0.20% at 57,901.14, and the Nifty was up 27 points or 0.16% at 17,248.40. About 1462 shares have advanced, 1803 shares declined, and 103 shares are unchanged. On the market depth, 1,843 shares ended lower while 1,508 closed higher on the BSE.

The top Nifty gainers were Bajaj Finance, Infosys, BPCL, Titan Company and Reliance Industries, top losers included Hindalco Industries, Cipla, Maruti Suzuki, ICICI Bank and Hero MotoCorp.

On a sectoral basis, except IT and oil & gas, all other sectoral indices ended in the red. In the broader markets, BSE midcap and smallcap indices closed down 0.5% each.

In the buzzing stock today was Hindalco, the stock fell nearly 2% to close at Rs 450. Cipla, Sun Pharma, ICICI Bank, Bajaj Auto, Hero MotoCorp, Maruti Suzuki, Eicher Motors, IndusInd Bank, UPL, SBI Life and State Bank of India also fell between 0.6-1.5%.