Stock Market Update: With Sensex & Nifty50 near flatline, Dalal Street heads into Gandhi Jayanti market holiday after seesaw moves

Share Market News: Domestic equity benchmarks finished a day full of seesaw moves nearly unchanged on Tuesday, as losses in energy shares offset gains in IT stocks while the heavyweight financial services space remained largely listless. Both headline indices finished about half a percentage point lower after gyrating in a wide range around the flatline, with Sensex shedding 33.5 points to 84,266.3 and Nifty50 losing 14 points to settle at 25,796.9. Two days into the holiday-truncated trading week, the main indices stood about 2.0 per cent below their all-time highs registered on Friday.    

During the session, the Sensex swung within a 549.5-point range around the flatline, between 84,098.9 and 84,648.4, while the broader, 50-scrip gauge broadly traded within the 25,700-25,900 range. 

At the end of trade, Tech Mahindra, Mahindra & Mahindra (M&M), Britannia, Infosys, HCLTech, SBI, Hero MotoCorp, and Wipro, closing between 0.9 per cent and 2.9 per cent higher, were among the top gainers in the Nifty50 basket of shares.

On the flipside, IndusInd Bank, ONGC, Asian Paints, Bajaj Auto, Tata steel, Titan, and HUL, closing between 1.0 per cent and 2.7 per cent lower, were the worst hit among the 29 laggards in the pack. 

Among heavyweights, selling pressure in Reliance, HDFC Life, HUL, and Larsen & Toubro shares weighed on the indices, although buying interest in stocks like Infosys and M&M lent some support.  

The Nifty Bank index--whose 12 constituents include some of the largest lenders in the country including SBI and HDFC Bank--inched lower to end at 52,922.6, having staged a 420-odd-point move around the flatline.

Nifty Metal rose 0.2 per cent driven by gains in stocks such as NALCO, Hindustan Copper, amid an apparent uptrend in the space.

Midcap and smallcap shares shrugged off the overall lacklustre market trend, with broader indices Nifty Midcap 100 and Nifty Smallcap 100 ending 0.3 per cent and 0.8 per cent higher respectively. 

Overall market breadth was in favour of the bulls with an advance-decline ratio of 7:5 as 2,301 stocks rose while 1,663 declined on BSE. 

The domestic financial markets will remain shut on Wednesday for the Mahatma Gandhi Jayanti holiday. 

ALSO READ: Will stock market remain closed on October 2 for Gandhi Jayanti? | Bank Holidays in October: From Gandhi Jayanti to Dussehra to Diwali, see full list of bank holidays this month

Catch all the latest stock market updates here. For all other news stories in buzzing categories like technology, automobiles and personal finance, and much more, visit Zeebiz.com.