Sensex pares gains, ends marginally higher; Nifty tops 8,250

NEW DELHI: The surprise move by the European Central Bank to lower the amount of stimulus for euro zone to 60 billion euros from 80 billion euros a month did not go down well with investors on Dalal Street.

Although the benchmark indices ended at a fresh one-month high on Friday, they lost the momentum seen on Thursday, when the Sensex had rallied over 450 points.

Equity benchmark Sensex of the Bombay Stock Exchange closed at 26,747 on Friday, up 53 points from its previous close. The index, which opened at 26,787, hit an intra-day high of 26,803 and a low of 26,707 with PSU lender State Bank of India ending up as top gainer and Bajaj Auto the worst laggard.


Blue chip stocks, including private sector lender ICICI Bank, ITC and SBI, contributed the most in the uptick.

On similar lines, the broader Nifty50 of the National Stock Exchange (NSE) ended flat at 8,261, up 15 points from its previous close.

“The equity market ended flat, as the unexpected reduction of stimulus by ECB and the gathering of Opec and some non-Opec nations for a consensus on output freeze led to hesitation among investors. FIIs have turned net buyers, though this may scale down the effect from Fed rate hike in the domestic market. Sentiment continues to be cautious until we find the silver lining from the FOMC outlook,” said Vinod Nair, Head of Research, Geojit BNP Paribas Financial Services.

In the sectoral landscape, realty stocks rallied the most pushing the S&P BSE Realty index to 1,298, up 1.62 per cent. The Phoenix Mills, DLF and Prestige Estates were the major main contributors to the rally.

Banking stocks were the second best performers of the day, thanks to a rise in the shares of ICICI Bank, SBI and Axis Bank.

Global stocks
Asian shares closed lower for the day. The MSCI's broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan slipped 0.3 per cent. Japan's Nikkei gained 1.2 per cent to 18,996, the highest closing level since December 2015, supported by Wall Street gains in overnight trade and solid buying of exporters on the back of a weaker yen.

China's blue-chip index ended higher owing to better-than-expected inflation, but it snapped an eight-week winning streak after a top regulator warned against ‘barbaric’ takeover deals.

The blue-chip CSI300 index rose 0.7 per cent to 3,493, while the Shanghai Composite gained 0.5 per cent to 3,232.

European markets opened higher. At the time of writing of this report, Britain's FTSE100 index was trading 12.53 points higher at 6,944 while Germany’s DAX was down 0.13 per cent at 11,164 and France's CAC40 was up 0.20 per cent at 4,744.