Domestic equity benchmarks ended little changed as gains in automobile and oil gas shares were offset by losses in banking and financial stocks.
The SP BSE Sensex fell 27 points or 0.07 per cent to close at 35,871 while the NSE Nifty 50 Index gained 2 points or 0.02 per cent to shut shop at 10,792.
For most part of the day, Sensex fluctuated between gains and losses as it moved at least eight times between the negative and positive territory.Fifteen of 19 sector gauges compiled by BSE ended higher led by the SP BSE Metal and SP BSE Auto Indexes' over 1.5 per cent gain.
SP BSE Basic Materials, SP BSE Power and SP BSE Realty Indexes also rose over a per cent each in today's trade.
On the other hand, the SP BSE Bankex was top loser, down 0.43 per cent dragged by Kotak Mahindra Bank after a Bloomberg report said that ING was said to have sold 2.3 crore shares in the country's second largest private lender by market capitalisation.State run oil retailers - Indian Oil, Hindustan Petroleum and Bharat Petroleum were among the top gainers in the Nifty 50 basket of shares, rising between 5.2 and 3.2 per cent each.
JSW Steel, Vedanta, Tata Motors and Yes Bank were also among the gainers in the Nifty.On the other hand, Kotak Mahindra Bank fell 3.95 per cent to Rs 1,238 making it the worst performer in the 50-share index.
GAIL India, Reliance Industries, HDFC Bank, Bajaj Finance and Cipla were also among the laggards.Mid- and small-cap shares outperformed their larger peers as the SP BSE MidCap Index rose 0.38 per cent and the SP BSE SmallCap Index climbed 0.77 per cent.