Closing Bell: Market fall extends, all eyes on Fed meeting

Domestic equity bourses Sensex and Nifty swapped between gains and losses from the opening bell on Wednesday, amid a mixed global trend as investors await the development of the Fed meeting.

Indian equity market witnessed an extremely volatile session today moving between gains and losses as market participants remained nervous ahead of the Federal Reserve's policy meeting later in the day. This marks the fourth straight day of losses for the stock markets. In today's trade, the Sensex started the day in red at 52,650.41 points and slipped to a low of 52,538.51 points. The index brushed a high of 52,867.73 points but was trading in a narrow range, falling into negative multiple times throughout the day. Owing to these developments, benchmark indices finished lower in yet another volatile session.

At the closing bell on June 15, the Sensex was down 152.18 points or 0.29% at 52,541.39, and the Nifty was down 39.90 points or 0.25% at 15,692.20. On the market breadth, around 1730 shares have advanced, 1484 shares declined, and 143 shares are unchanged.

Top Nifty losers today were Tata Steel, ONGC, NTPC, Infosys and Wipro, while top gainers were Bajaj Finserv, Bajaj Finance, Tata Motors, Hero MotoCorp and Grasim Industries.

On the sectoral front, buying is seen in the auto, capital goods, and pharma, while selling was witnessed in the power, IT, metal, oil & gas, realty and FMCG. In the broad markets, the BSE midcap and smallcap indices ended in the green.

In global markets, European shares were slightly higher on Wednesday after the European Central Bank informed that it will hold an unscheduled monetary policy meeting later today. The pan-European Stoxx 600 surged 0.4% in early deals, with banks and insurance stocks climbing 2%. On Wall Street, futures of the main indices were up in the range of 0.4% to 0.5%. Asian markets closed mixed with Nikkei falling over 1%, and Shanghai Composite adding 0.5%.