Mumbai Aug 23 (IANS) Amid a largely volatile trade the key Indian equity indices settled at record closing levels on Thursday with marginal gains supported by healthy buying in capital goods and IT indices.
Earlier in the day both S&P BSE Sensex and NSE Nifty50 touched their respective intra-day record high levels of 38 487.63 points and 11 620.70 points. However they could not hold the gains for long.
Consequent to the Indian markets being around record levels any minor gain in the day s trade nudges the key indices to fresh benchmarks.
In the day s trade fresh concerns of a trade-war like situation between the US and China limited the gains analysts said. Both the US and China enforced 25 per cent tariffs on $16 billion worth of each other s goods on Thursday ratcheting up the trade war between the world s two largest economies.
Index-wise the wider Nifty50 on the National Stock Exchange closed at 11 582.75 points up only 11.85 points or 0.10 per cent from its previous close of 11 570.90 points.
The benchmark BSE Sensex which had opened at 38 416.65 points closed at 38 336.76 points higher by just 51.01 points or 0.13 per cent from its previous close of 38 285.75 points. It touched an intra-day low of 38 227.36 points.
Moreover the broader markets ended on a mixed note. The S&P BSE Mid-cap edged up by 0.20 per cent and the S&P BSE Small-cap declined 0.14 per cent. The BSE market breadth was bearish with 1 512 declines and 1 217 advances.
"Domestic markets opened the day on a positive note and scaled record highs in morning trade. However selling pressure at higher levels subsequently pulled the markets lower and pushed them to finally close the day near the flat line " said Abhijeet Dey Senior Fund Manager for Equities at BNP Paribas Mutual Fund.
He further said that caution edged in after Beijing implemented new retaliatory tariffs against the United States.
Deepak Jasani Head of Retail Research at HDFC Securities said major Asian markets have closed on a positive note barring the Hang Seng index and the European indices like CAC 40 traded in the green.
On Thursday the Indian rupee depreciated by 29 paise to settle at 70.12 per US dollar from 69.81 on the previous trade session.
Investment-wise provisional data with exchanges showed that foreign institutional investors bought scrips worth Rs 433.21 crore and the domestic institutional investors purchased stocks worth Rs 142 crore.
Sector-wise the S&P BSE capital goods index rose 188.28 points the IT index was up 174.09 points and the FMCG index rose 139.57 points.
In contrast the S&P BSE banking index declined by 264.92 points the index metal fell 202.22 points and finance index ended 39.45 points lower than its previous close.
In a major stock-wise development Reliance Industries (RIL) became the first Indian company to cross the market-capitalization mark of Rs 8 lakh crore. At closing the market cap of RIL on the BSE stood at Rs 8.04 lakh crore. Reliance was among the top gainers of the Sensex on Thursday.
The top gainers on the Sensex were Larsen and Toubro up 2.30 per cent at Rs 1 352.50; NTPC up 2.05 per cent at Rs 164.50; Reliance Industries up 1.86 at Rs 1 269.70; Adani Ports up 1.68 per cent at Rs 383.80; and Power Grid up 1.47 per cent at Rs 190 per share.
The majors losers were Tata Motors down 4.33 per cent at Rs 257.40; Vedanta down 2.01 per cent at Rs 214.80; Tata Steel down 1.85 per cent at Rs 571.50; Bajaj Auto down 1.53 per cent at Rs 2 685.95 per share.

--IANS ravi-rrb-rv/nir/sed