Equity benchmarks erased early gains and settled lower for a third straight day on Wednesday, with the Sensex falling above 237 points, dragged lower by HDFC twins amid continued outflows from overseas funds and mixed global trends.
Despite a firm open, the Sensex failed to maintain momentum, falling 237.44 points or 0.41% to settle at 58,338.93. On the day, it fell 285.14 points, or 0.48%, to 58,291.23.
On similar lines, the NSE Nifty fell 54.65 points, or 0.31%, to end at 17,475.65.
Among the 30 Sensex stocks were HDFC, HDFC Bank, Maruti, Dr. Reddy’s, Asian Paints, Bajaj Finserv, PowerGrid and Kotak Bank are among the biggest laggards.
In contrast, ITC, Sun Pharma, Hindustan Unilever Limited, State Bank of India and NTPC were among the prominent gainers.
“Nifty remained volatile throughout the session with a broadly bearish bias,” said Rupak De, senior technical analyst at LKP Securities.
In the previous trade, the Sensex fell 388.20 points, or 0.66%, to settle at 58,576.37. The Nifty fell 144.65 points, or 0.82%, to end at 17,530.30.
Meanwhile, retail inflation rose to a 17-month high of 6.95% in March and remained above the Reserve Bank’s upper tolerance limit, while factory production grew just 1.7% in February, according to official data released on Tuesday.
In Asia, markets mostly settled higher with Hong Kong, Seoul and Tokyo finishing in the green while Shanghai was lower.
Stocks in the United States ended marginally lower on Tuesday.
International oil benchmark Brent rose 0.56% to $105.23 a barrel.
Foreign institutional investors remained in sell mode, selling a net £3,128.39 billion worth of shares on Tuesday, according to stock market data.
Stock markets remain Thursday for Mahavir Jayanti and Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar Jayanti as well as closed on Friday for Good Friday.
