Indian Shares End With Minor Gains

(RTTNews) - Indian shares gave up some early gains to end modestly higher on Thursday. While FMCG stocks rose for a second straight session, weakness in metal, pharma, and oil & gas stocks served to cap overall gains in the broader market.

Underlying sentiment remained underpinned somewhat as oil prices extended declines to levels seen before the Middle East conflict on signs of improving flows through the Strait of Hormuz, a key maritime route that handles around one-fifth of global oil supplies.

On the flip side, concerns over FII selling and a stronger dollar in overseas markets on rising expectations of a Federal Reserve rate hike this year prompted some profit booking at higher levels.

The benchmark BSE Sensex ended the session up 109.25 points, or 0.14 percent, at 77,100.47, after having hit a high of 77,803 earlier in the day.

The NSE Nifty index hit an intraday high of 24,261 before giving up some gains to close at 24,056, up 34.35 points, or 0.14 percent, from its previous close.

The BSE mid-cap and small-cap indexes fell 0.4 percent and half a percent, respectively.

The market breadth was weak on the BSE, with 2,558 shares declining while 1,654 shares advanced and 194 shares closed unchanged.

Among the top gainers, airline Indigo surged 4.8 percent, driven by a sustained fall in crude oil prices in recent sessions.

Automakers Mahindra & Mahindra and Maruti Suzuki India both surged around 4 percent while lenders SBI and ICICI Bank added around 1 percent each.

On the losing side, Asian Paints, HCL Technologies, NTPC, Bharti Airtel, Infosys, Tech Mahindra, BEL and Power Grid Corp fell 1-2 percent.