Market Wrap, Jan 07: Here's all that happened in the markets today

Indian equity markets turned volatile in the last hour of trade and ended in the red for the second day in a row as investors rolled over their trade positions due to the weekly expiry of F&O contracts.

At close, the S&P BSE Sensex was quoting at 48,093 levels, down 81 points or 0.17 per cent, amid sell off in information technology and FMCG stocks. The broader Nifty50, on the other hand, closed 9 points, or 0.06 per cent, lower at 14,137 levels. The index hit a new peak of 14,256.25 in the morning deals.

Overall, market breadth remained in the favour of the bulls with nearly two stocks rising against a stock that declined.

The broader markets continued to outrun their large-cap peers. The S&P BSE MidCap, which topped the 19,000-mark for the first time and hit a record peak of 19,035, ended the day at 18,947 levels, up 1 per cent. The S&P BSE SmallCap index added 0.85 per cent at close to settle at 18,773.

On the sectoral front, investors rotated funds out of defensive stocks and bet on cyclicals as the Nifty IT, FMCG, and Pharma closed Thursday's trade in the red. The Nifty Realty index (up 1.35 per cent) and the Private Bank and PSB indices (up 1 per cent each) were the top performing indices.

Among individual stocks, Bharti Airtel regained its market capitalisation of Rs 3 trillion in the intra-day session, on the BSE today, after its shares jumped 5.5 per cent to Rs 554. At close, the m-cap stood at Rs 2.97 trillion.

That apart, realty stocks including Indiabulls Real Estate, Sobha, Sunteck Realty, and DLF ended up to 13 per cent higher on the NSE after the Maharashtra government on Wednesday slashed premiums and levies charged on construction by 50 per cent till December 31 2021.

On the economic front, the government expects the real GDP to shrink by 7.7 per cent in FY21, while the The growth in nominal GDP during 2020-21 is estimated at -4.2 per cent.

In a separate development, the US has held that India's 2 per cent digital tax on technology majors such as Facebook, Amazon, and Google is unreasonable, burdensome and discriminatory and is inconsistent with international tax principles.

Global markets

Outgoing US President Donald Trump said that there will be an "orderly" transfer of power to Joe Biden on January 20. Trump's remarks came minutes after a Joint Session of the US Congress formally certified the Electoral College victory of Biden as the next US President and Kamala Harris as the Vice President.

Globally, stocks rose on Thursday, reversing losses incurred on Wednesday. Europe's Euro STOXX 600 gained 0.3 per cent, with indices in Frankfurt and Paris up 0.4 per cent and 0.6 per cent, respectively.

The MSCI world equity index, which tracks shares in almost 50 countries, rose 0.3 per cent.

Earlier, MSCI's broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan rose 0.6 per cent.

At around 4:30 pm, Dow Jones Futures were up 26 points indicating a flat to positive start on the Wall Street later today.