Sensex sinks 637pts, gives up 61K, Nifty near 18K; Realty, Metals top drags

CLOSING BELL

Stock market highlights

Equity markets melted under selling pressure on Wednesday to snap their two-day gains as the Street awaited release of the minutes of the US Fed's latest meeting. 

During the session, the BSE Sensex gave up the 61,000 level and slipped 700 points to the day's low of 60,594 before closing 637 points lower (down 1 per cent) at 60,657.

The NSE Nifty shed 190 points (down 1 per cent) to close at 18,043 level. It had slumped 213 points to touch the day's low of 18,021. 

Among index constituents, Tata Motors, Power Grid, Tata Steel, HDFC twins, Infosys, Wipro, Reliance, IndusInd Bank, ITC, Nestle and Bharti Airtel were the worst hit on the Sensex, down 1-2.5 per cent. On the Nifty, JSW Steel, Hindalco, Coal India and ONGC were the top laggards, which shed up to 4 per cent. 

TCS, Maruti, Divis's Labs, HDFC Life and Dr Reddy's were among the handful of stocks that held minor gains. 

Losses were spread across the broader market as well. The BSE Midcap and Smallcap indices lost 1 per cent and 0.8 per cent, respectively. 

Sectorally, all pockets ended lower led by Nifty Realty, Metal and PSB indices, which fell 2 per cent each. Pharma index suffered a fractional loss of 0.15 per cent. 

Primary market

As of 3:40 pm, the initial public offering (IPO) of Sah Polymers was subscribed 16 times on the final day of subscription with the retail investor and NII portions having been subscribed by 36 and 32 times, respectively.