Sensex, Nifty close marginally lower, Bharti Airtel, ONGC top losers

The Sensex on Friday closed lower in rangebound trade, sustaining loss of 1 percent (267 points) for the week.

The Nifty too ended in negative territory, down 0.17 percent at 8,139 level.

For the week, the Nifty fell 1.48 percent or 122 points.

While the Nifty traded in a range of 8,127 to 8,178, the Sensex moved between 26,455 and 25,594 levels on Friday.

On the 30 stock Sensex, top losers were Bharti Airtel (2.67 percent) and ONGC (2.30 percent).

Tata Motors (1.95 percent) and Cipla (1.32 percent) were the top Sensex gainers.

Market breadth was negative with 1484 stocks falling against 1126 closing higher on the BSE.

The Indian market remained largely resilient to the Federal Reserve rate hike of 25 bps compared to its global peers on Thursday.

While, the Sensex closed 83 points or 0.31 percent lower post the Fed rate hike, Nifty fell 0.35 percent to close at 8153 level.

However, the rate hike has made possibilities of funds flowing to the US higher in lure of higher interest rates.

Consequently, the dollar index is hovering near its 14-year highs of 102.860.

The dollar rise will hit other currencies and result in likely intervention of governments to support their currencies.

The rupee closed at 67.79 level to the dollar.

Asian markets

Japan's benchmark Nikkei 225 index rose 0.7 percent to close at 19,401.15 as the weakening yen helped shares of the country's exporters. Other Asian indexes were listless. South Korea's Kospi added 0.3 percent to 2,042.24 and Hong Kong's Hang Seng gave up the day's gains in the final hour to close 0.2 percent lower at 22,020.75.

The Shanghai Composite Index in mainland China gained 0.2 percent to 3,122.98 and Australia's S&P/ASX 200 ticked 0.1 percent lower to 5,532.90. Benchmarks in Taiwan, Indonesia and the Philippines lost ground but indexes in Singapore and Thailand rose.