Earlier in the day, the BSE benchmark went up by 145.64 points to the day's high of 16,298.39. It finally closed at 16,183.26, a gain of 30.51 points.
Before the gains were wiped out, the sentiment had improved following State Bank of India reporting better-than-expected earnings. SBI on Friday posted net profit of Rs 4,050.27 crore in the fourth quarter ended March 2012 against Rs 20.88 crore recorded in Q4 of the previous fiscal.
"A sudden bout of selling in last hour of trading session led markets to surrender almost all gains... The decline in rupee made the sentiments jittery. Markets managed to close in a positive territory, albeit with slight gains," said Shanu Goel, Senior Research Analyst, Bonanza Portfolio.
The rupee was threatening to breach 55-level as stocks markets were wrapping up the day's trade. After stock market hours, the rupee breached the psychological 55 level.
Tata Power with a gain of 4.5 per cent led Sensex gainers today, followed by SBI (3.37 pc), Maruti (2.99 pc) and Bhel (2.51 pc).
Despite a weak rupee, which boosts exporters' margins, IT stocks in Sensex like Wipro and Infosys were the worst-hit with losses of nearly 2 per cent each. TCS also closed 0.2 per cent down.
Amongst sectoral indices, BSE-IT was the worst performer with a loss of 1.19 per cent. It was followed by BSE-FMCG (1.17 pc) and BSE-TECk (1 pc).
On the other hand, BSE-Capital Goods (1.96 pc), BSE-Realty (1.90 pc) and BSE-Power (1.27 pc) lent support to the stock market today.
The NSE 50-share Nifty also moved up by 14.60 points of 0.30 per cent to 4,906.05. (MORE)
