Sensex falls for second straight day, Nifty ends below 14,150

Domestic stock market indices, Sensex and Nifty erased day's gains to end lower Thursday afternoon dragged by selling in FMCG, IT and pharma stocks.

At close, the S&P BSE Sensex was quoting at 48,093 levels, down 81 points or 0.17 per cent, amid sell off in information technology and FMCG stocks. Bharti Airtel (up 3.6 per cent) was the top gainer on the Sensex, followed by IndusInd Bank, Axis Bank, L&T, and HDFC. On the other hand, Hindustan Unilever, Titan, Nestle, Infosys, and ITC ended between 1.5 per cent and 2 per cent lower.

The broader Nifty50, on the other hand, closed 9 points, or 0.06 per cent, lower at 14,137 levels. Out of the total 50 constituents, 27 advances on the Nifty while 23 ended the day in the red. The Nifty50 index hit a new peak of 14,256.25 in the morning deals.

Global markets

Global stocks rose on Thursday, reversing losses incurred on Wednesday. Europe's Euro STOXX 600 gained 0.3 per cent, with indices in Frankfurt and Paris up 0.4 per cent and 0.6 per cent, respectively.

The MSCI world equity index, which tracks shares in almost 50 countries, rose 0.3 per cent.

Earlier, MSCI's broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan rose 0.6 per cent and Japan's Nikkei hit its highest since 1990.

(With inputs from Reuters)