Market Wrap, August 18: Here's all that happened in the markets today

An across-the-board buying helped the benchmark indices settle with over a per cent gains on Tuesday. The S&P BSE Sensex rallied 478 points or 1.26 per cent to settle at 38,528 levels while NSE's Nifty closed the session at 11,385 levels, up 138 points or 1.23 per cent. India VIX declined over 4 per cent to 20.43 levels.
 

HDFC Bank, Reliance Industries (RIL), ICICI Bank, and Infosys contributed the most to the Sensex's gains. UltraTech Cement (up over 3 per cent) was the top gainer on the index while Tech Mahindra (down over 1 per cent) was the biggest loser. 
 

In the broader market, the S&P BSE MidCap index gained over 1 per cent to 14,656.68 levels while the S&P BSE SmallCap index gained 1.3 per cent to 14,154 points. 
 

Shares of consumer durable companies, including household appliance manufacturers, witnessed sharp rally on Tuesday. The S&P BSE Consumer Durables index surged as much as 2.23 per cent during the trade. Butterfly Gandhimathi Appliances zoomed 15 per cent to Rs 157.90 on the BSE during the day. 
 

Realty shares were in focus on Tuesday, with individual stocks gaining as much as 12 per cent on the NSE. The Nifty Realty index rose 4.42 per cent in intra-day deals, as compared to 1.2 per cent gain in the benchmark Nifty50 index. Sunteck Realty jumped as much as 12.29 per cent to Rs 239.80 per share. DLF, Brigade Enterprises, Indiabulls Real Estate, and Oberoi Realty gained in the range of 5-9 per cent, while Sobha Developers, Phoneix Mills, Godrej Properties, and Prestige Estate Projects rose over 2.5 per cent on the NSE.
 

Shares of SBI Cards and Payment Services hit fresh 52-week high, up 1.4 per cent, at Rs 815 on the BSE on Tuesday after the State Bank of India subsidiary raised Rs 500 crore via debt instruments.
 

Mukesh Ambani, Asia's richest man who spent the early few months of the pandemic raising more than $20 billion by selling stakes in his technology venture, is now on a shopping spree.The Indian billionaire is looking to acquire several local online retailers to help expand product offerings, people familiar with the matter said, as he races to build his e-commerce platform and compete against Amazon.com Inc.