The Sensex and Nifty fell for the first time in five sessions on Wednesday after hitting record highs earlier, as caution set in ahead of the release of the minutes from the Reserve Bank of India's policy meeting held earlier this month.
The 30-share BSE index Sensex ended down 59.36 points or 0.18 per cent at 33,777.38 and the 50-share NSE index Nifty closed lower by 19 points or 0.18 per cent at 10,444.20.
Among BSE sectoral indices, realty index was the star-peformer and was up 3.01 per cent, followed by metal 0.75 per cent, infrastructure 0.69 per cent and capital goods 0.64 per cent. On the other hand, banking index was down 0.34 per cent, auto 0.3 per cent and PSU 0.18 per cent.
Top five Sensex gainers were Wipro (+1.54%), ONGC (+1.46%), Hero MotoCorp (+1.18%), L&T (+1.06%) and Infosys (+0.85%), while the major losers were Dr Reddy's (-1.8%), Bharti Airtel (-1.45%), Tata Steel (-1.09%), HDFC (-0.98%) and HDFC Bank (-0.91%).
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Early trade
The 30-share BSE index Sensex jumped 119.57 points to a fresh record high of 33,956.31 and the 50-share NSE index Nifty touched a new record high of 10,494.45 on bets that the government will unveil more reforms to boost rural economy.
Domestic sentiment remained upbeat as Prime Minister Narendra Modi's electoral victories in key states continued to lend support. The ruling Bharatiya Janata Party's victories in Modi's home state of Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh have raised hopes of continued reforms, boosting markets over the last four sessions.
But some caution set in ahead of the release of the minutes from the Reserve Bank of India's policy meeting earlier this month in which the policy rate was kept unchanged. The minutes are scheduled to be released after the market closes.
“Going forward, we expect markets to be stable as compared to the volatility we observed over the last few weeks,” said Sudhakar Pattabiraman, head of research operations at MarketSmith, which is part of financial services provider William O'Neil.
Shares of Ashiana Housing rallied as much as 8.4 per cent to Rs 181.70 as ICICI Prudential Mutual Fund had yesterday bought 22,59,790 shares of Ashiana on the NSE
Shares of Maruti Suzuki touched Rs 10,000 mark. After opening at Rs 9,970 against the previous close of Rs 9,804.50, the scrip touched an intraday high of 10,000 and a low of Rs 9,864.35.
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HDFC Bank plans to raise up to Rs. 24,000 crore($3.75 billion) to fund growth by selling shares to investors, including a preferential issue to its parent HDFC Ltd.
Asian shares fell on Wednesday, taking their cues from Wall Street with investor enthusiasm toward US tax changes ebbing as the long-awaited reform bill wound its way through Congress, while higher US Treasury yields underpinned the dollar.
MSCI's broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan was down 0.2 per cent in early trading, while Japan's Nikkei stock index also edged down 0.2 per cent. The Dow Jones Industrial Average shed 0.15 per cent, the S&P 500 lost 0.32 per cent, and the Nasdaq Composite dropped 0.44 per cent on Tuesday.
(With inputs from Reuters)