NIFTY50 and Sensex close marginally lower; Stock Market Highlights

Thank you, readers! That's all from Upstox.com's live market coverage on 18 December 2023. We’ll be back with our live coverage at 8:00 am on Tuesday.

The NIFTY Financial Services (-0.3%) index closed lower today. LIC Housing (-1.8%) and Shriram Finance (-1.3%) were the top losers, whereas IEX (+1.2%) and REC Ltd (+1.1%) were the top gainers.

The BANK NIFTY (-0.5%) index closed lower today. All the 12 constituents of the Bank Nifty index closed in red. ICICI Bank (-1.2%), Axis Bank(-0.8%), HDFC Bank(-0.2%) contributed to the decline in index.

NIFTY50 (-0.1%) and Sensex (-0.2%) closed lower today, snapping its three day winning run. Bajaj Auto, Hindalco, Sun Pharma were amongst the top gainers, while Power Grid, ITC, Tech Mahindra closed lower. On the sectoral front, Media and pharma were the top gainers, while Realty and PSU Bank were the top losers.

Shares of the airline's operator hit a 20% upper circuit today. This was after the media reports stated that SpiceJet reportedly showed interest to acquire budget airline carrier Go First.

Last week, SpiceJet announced plans to raise more than ₹2,250 crore by issuing warrants and fresh equity shares at an issue price of ₹50 per share.

Genesys International has bagged an order worth ₹22 crores (excluding GST) from Porter house to deploy its state-of-the-art digital twin mapping technology for the redevelopment of Dharavi. The project is slated for completion within a timeframe of 9 months.

The shares of the mapping services provider are up by 3.7%.

Long build up: Bajaj Auto, Hindalco, Adani Ports, Sun Pharma, Bajaj Finance Short build up: Power Grid, ITC, ICICI Bank, ONGC, JSW Steel

The government-owned construction services provider has received an order worth ₹150 crore from state-owned steel maker SAIL. The order is for construction and renovation works at the Durgapur steel plant and will be executed over the next three years.

The company has also bagged an order worth ₹29.7 crore from an institute in Jammu and Kashmir for the construction of the permanent building of the Composite Regional Centre (CRC) at Jammu.

Meanwhile, shares of the NBCC are up by 0.7%.

₹1,459 crore IPO of Inox India has been subscribed 25.2 times till 2:00 pm. Retail portion was subscribed more than 12 times. Today is the last day to apply for this IPO. To know more and apply for these IPOs, click here.

The rise in sugar stocks comes after the government reversed its decision to ban sugarcane juice for ethanol making. This decision came barely a week after the government had banned the use of cane juice for ethanol production. Allowing the sugar diversion for ethanol production could benefit the sugar mills.