The benchmark NSE Nifty recouped most of its early losses and ended marginally lower by four points as market staged a dramatic recovery in late trade following heavy buying in rate sensitive stocks amid rate cut hopes.
Positive comments from Finance Minister Arun Jaitley that India's economic growth is expected to improve despite unfavourable global winds as the government continues with several reform programmes also contributed to the recovery momentum.
After falling sharply in early volatile trading tracking an uninspiring lead from Asian counterparts as well as heavy profit-booking in recent gainers, bourses showcased a remarkable turnaround towards the tail-end to cut early losses.
The rebound came despite sluggish overseas cues, predominantly helped by an intra-day recovery in rate sensitive counters as well as rate cut optimism.
The 50-share index opened with a gap-down at 7,911.50 and hovered between 7,908.35 and 7,987.90 before settling at 7,977.10, showing a modest fall of 4.80 points or 0.06 per cent.
The NSE index had rallied by 152.80 points in the previous two sessions.
Elsewhere, barring China most Asian bourses ended deep in red on the back of the US Federal Reserves decision to hold interest rates on global growth outlook.
European bourses are trading cautiously after losses in Asia.
Among the sectoral indices, FMCG, energy, healthcare, metal and technology witnessed selling pressure.
However, financial and rate sensitive components like PSU Bank, Bank Nifty, infra, realty and auto saw strong buying.
While, small-cap largely outperformed benchmark indices, gaining sharply by 1.58 per cent and mid-cap by 0.58 per cent.
Major losers included RIL, ITC, Bosch, Bharti Airtel, M&M, Dr Reddy's, Asian Paints, HUL, Sun Pharma, Lupin, Grasim and Tata Steel.
Axis Bank, Maruti, SBI, ICICI Bank, HDFC Bank, L&T, Kotak Mahindra, TechM, Tata Motors, Power Grid and Hindalco were top gainers.
Turnover in the cash segment slumped to Rs 14,732.29 crore compared with Rs 23,030.99 crore last Friday.
A total of 9,975.77 lakh shares changed hands in 7,064,820 trades and the total market capitalisation of NSE stood at Rs 9,510,200 crore.
