Final trade: Sensex declines 320 pts, Nifty closes 86 pts lower at 24,971

Indian equities ended lower amid a broad-based sell-off. At the close, Nifty ended lower by 0.34 per cent or 86 points at 24,971.3, while the BSE Sensex slipped 0.39 per cent or 319 to 81,501.36 . Meanwhile, broader markets, however, outperformed the frontline indices.

Sectorally, financial services, realty and oil & gas indices ended in the green, while all others saw losses during trade today.

IT stocks bore the brunt and ended sharply lower ahead of the earnings by Infosys and Wipro later tomorrow.

From the Nifty pack, top gainers included stocks like HDFC Life, Dr Reddy's Laboratories, Grasim, Bharti Airtel and HDFC Bank, while laggards included stocks like Trent, Infosys, Infosys, Hero MotoCorp and Adani Ports.

HDFC Life emerged as the top Nifty gainer as the company upped its APE guidance to 18-20 per cent in its earnings call post the release of its Q2 numbers and Street primarily cheered the move.

Meanwhile, Infosys and Wipro, which are slated to release their numbers later tomorrow ended lower by over 2 per cent and 0.08 per cent lower, respectively.

Vinod Nair, Head of Research, Geojit Financial Services on the markets performance today said, "The national market traded range bound with a negative bias due to the fear of a downgrade in FY25 earnings, which could impact the sustainability of premium valuation. The participants are expecting only a slow pace in earnings expansion in Q2FY25 due to insipid demand and volatility in input prices."

The rate of recovery in Q2 compared to Q1 is below expectation, he added.

Meanwhile, European markets traded mixed as a bunch of earnings from companies including ASML, LVMH disappointed.

At the last count, while FTSE traded in the green with gains of up to 0.61 per cent, German's DAX and French CAC were in the red.