Market Wrap, June 19: NIFTY50 and SENSEX close flat; midcap and small cap stocks bleed

Indian equity benchmarks ended Thursday’s rangebound session lower dragged down by weakness in index heavyweights like Infosys, Bajaj Finance, Tata Consultancy Services and State Bank of India.

After a negative start, indices recovered and traded near neutral lines for most part of the day amid escalating conflict between Israel and Iran as they continued to attack each other. In the final hour of trade, markets slipped into the red but managed to close with minor losses.

The SENSEX ended at 81,361.87, down 82.79 points or 0.10% after trading in a range of 81,191.04 and 81,583.94 and NIFTY50 index slipped 18.80 points to close at 24,793.25.

The broader indices ended sharply lower with the BSE Mid cap index falling 1.64%, and the Small cap index dropping by 1.77%.

The only gaining sectoral index on the BSE was Auto index, the index rose 0.42%, while Realty index fell 1.63%, Utilities declined 1.61%, PSU fell 1.43%, Power tumbled 1.24% and Metal index declined 1.18%.

The top gainers in the Sensex were Mahindra & Mahindra (1.57%), Titan Company (0.74%), Maruti Suzuki (0.45%), Bharti Airtel (0.43%) and Larsen & Toubro (0.32%).

On the flipside, Adani Ports and Special Economic Zone was top SENSEX loser (-2.50%), Bajaj Finance (-2.19%), Tech Mahindra (-1.95%), SBI (-1.13%) and NTPC (-1.07%) were also among the top losers in the SENSEX.

The top gainers in NIFTY50 index were Tata Consumer Products, Eicher Motors, Mahindra & Mahindra, Wipro and Apollo Hospitals.

On the other hand, Adani Ports and Special Economic Zone was top NIFTY50 loser, the stock fell 2.52%, Bajaj Finance (-2.01%), Adani Enterprises (-1.57%), Tech Mahindra (-1.56%) and Coal India (-1.56%) were also among losers in the NIFTY50 index. European markets were trading lower; France’s CAC fell 46.81 points or 0.61% to 7,609.31, Germany’s DAX lost 79.03 points or 0.34% to 23,238.78 and UK’s FTSE 100 decreased 18.32 points or 0.21% to 8,825.15.