Investing.com – India equities were lower at the close on Thursday, as losses in the Metals, Power and Banking sectors propelled shares lower.
At the close in NSE, the Nifty 50 declined 0.38%, while the BSE Sensex 30 index lost 0.35%.
The biggest gainers of the session on the Nifty 50 were Eicher Motors Ltd. (NS:EICH), which rose 3.15% or 681.20 points to trade at 22301.00 at the close. GAIL Ltd (NS:GAIL) added 3.06% or 13.00 points to end at 437.75 and Bharti Infratel Limited (NS:BHRI) was up 2.28% or 8.550 points to 384.000 in late trade.
Biggest losers included Idea Cellular Ltd (NS:IDEA), which lost 4.97% or 3.85 points to trade at 73.60 in late trade. POWER GRID CORPORATION OF INDIA (NS:PGRD) declined 4.01% or 7.70 points to end at 184.20 and Asian Paints Ltd. (NS:ASPN) shed 3.08% or 29.90 points to 940.00.
The top performers on the BSE Sensex 30 were Gail (India) Ltd. (BO:GAIL) which rose 2.87% to 437.00, Sun Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd. (BO:SUN) which was up 1.62% to settle at 721.80 and Hero MotoCorp Limited (BO:HROM) which gained 1.45% to close at 3215.00.
The worst performers were POWER GRID CORPORATION OF INDIA (BO:PGRD) which was down 3.96% to 184.40 in late trade, Asian Paints Ltd. (BO:ASPN) which lost 3.18% to settle at 939.05 and Tata Motors Ltd. (BO:TAMO) which was down 2.44% to 448.15 at the close.
Declining stocks outnumbered rising ones by 939 to 530 and 58 ended unchanged; on the Bombay Stock Exchange, 1546 fell and 1092 advanced, while 132 ended unchanged on the India National Stock Exchange.
The India Vix, which measures the implied volatility of Nifty 50 options, was down 0.96% to 16.6875.
In commodities trading, Gold for February delivery was down 0.37% or 4.35 to $1169.55 a troy ounce. Meanwhile, Crude oil for delivery in January rose 0.67% or 0.33 to hit $49.77 a barrel, while the February Brent oil contract rose 0.89% or 0.46 to trade at $52.30 a barrel.
USD/INR was down 0.31% to 68.380, while EUR/INR fell 0.02% to 72.6370.
The US Dollar Index was down 0.31% at 101.32.