Closing Bell: Sensex, Nifty end in red amid profit booking; auto, pharma engineer fall on Friday

Domestic equity markets ended the week in red. This was the third negative closing for this week. During the week both Nifty and Bank Nifty recorded new life highs. Today, the BSE Sensex closed at 61,663.48, down 87.12 points or 0.14 per cent. Meanwhile, the Nifty50 settled at 18,307.65, down by 36.25 points or 0.20 per cent. The Nifty Bank index closed at 42,301.40, down 156.65 points or 0.37 per cent.  

On Friday, Sensex traded in 600-points range while Nifty traded in 370-points range. 

India VIX, a measure of volatility in the Nifty was down 3.27 per cent from the Thursday closing to end at 14.39.  

In the 52-stock Nifty50, 14 stocks advanced while 35 declined and 1 stock remained unchanged. The top gainers were HCL Technologies, Hindustan Unilever, Asian Paints, SBI and Infosys while the top losers were Mahindra & Mahindra, Bajaj Auto, NTPC, Bajaj Finance and Indusind Bank.  

Out of the 15 sectoral indices, 13 closed the day in the red against two gainers in Nifty PSU Bank (+1.53 per cent) and Nifty Realty (+0.10 per cent). The worst performers were Nifty Auto, Nifty Pharma and Nifty Healthcare Index which dropped 1.18, 0.67 and 0.65 per cent respectively. 

On BSE, out of 3,626 which traded, 1,461 stocks advanced, 2,037 declined while 128 remained unchanged. 119 stocks hit their 52-week highs while 74 hit their 52-week lows.   

Profit booking was seen even in the broader markets with Nifty Mid Cap 100 and Nifty Small Cap 100 indices closing with declines of 0.50 per cent.  

The rupee depreciated 6 paise to close at 81.70 (provisional) against the US dollar on Friday amid a lacklustre trend in domestic equities and firming crude oil prices.  

Singapore-based SGX Nifty futures were trading at 18,347.5, down 27.5 points or 0.15 per cent. Dow Futures were trading at 33,635.60, up 89.30 points or 0.27 per cent.