Sensex, Nifty Log Best Week In A Month: Market Wrap

India's stock benchmarks snapped its worst three-week losing streak in five months, aided by information technology, metal, realty, media, and pharma stocks, ahead of the quarterly earnings season.

The weekly gains came amid a surge in oil prices following the OPEC+ bloc's decision to cut supply, in a bid to arrest the slide in oil prices. Also in focus is the U.S. monthly jobs data, which is scheduled to be announced later today.

The stock indices opened and closed the week with losses, but gained during other sessions (Tuesday and Thursday) in a truncated week.

Sectorally, information technology, metal, realty and media indices gained the most in the week gone by. Only auto and FMCG indices declined.

On Friday, the Sensex erased most of the intraday losses to close at 58,191.29. The 30-stock gauge lost 0.64% to reach an intraday low of 57,851.15.

The Nifty 50 fell 0.1% to close at 17,314.65.

Today, 21 of the Nifty 50 stocks rose, while 29 fell.

Titan Co., Power Grid Corp. of India Ltd., IndusInd Bank Ltd., ONGC Ltd. and Grasim Ltd. were the top gainers.

Tata Consumer Products Ltd., Coal India Ltd., Bharat Petroleum Corp. Ltd., Mahindra & Mahindra Ltd. and SBI declined the most among the index stocks.

The Midcap index almost mirrored its larger peers, while the Smallcap measure outperformed, rising 0.30%.

Eleven of the 19 sectoral indices compiled by BSE Ltd. declined, with the energy and oil & gas measures sliding the most. On the flip side, the consumer durables index gained over 2%.

The market breadth was skewed in favour of bulls. About 1,943 stocks rose, 1,511 fell and 99 remained unchanged.

"Markets took a pause after the recent rebound and ended almost unchanged, in absence of any major trigger," Ajit Mishra, vice president of research at Religare Broking, wrote in a note.

According to him, global markets, especially the U.S., are not offering indications of a sustained recovery, and hence, volatility is here to stay and participants should plan overnight positions accordingly.

"Meanwhile, on the index front, the tone would remain positive till the Nifty holds 17,100. We feel the prudent approach is to focus on top-performing stocks from across sectors and use intermediate dips to add them, instead of chasing laggards in hope of a rebound," he said.