Share Market Today: The two key equity benchmarks, Sensex and Nifty, on Saturday settled slightly higher as the special trading session ended. The S&P BSE Sensex closed trading almost 100 points higher and crossed the 74K mark at 74,005.94, while the NSE Nifty50 ended the session marginally up by 36 points at 22,502.


 At 11:59 am, the BSE Sensex traded about 70 points higher to touch 73,987, while the Nifty50 stood at 22,493.40, inching up by 27 points. The first half of the special session closed on a muted note.


Stock update


On the 30-share Sensex platform, Nestle, PowerGrid, Tata Motors, HCL Tech, and Hindustan Unilever emerged as gainers. On the other hand, JSW Steel, M&M, Maruti Suzuki, UltraTech Cement, and Reliance ended among the losers.


On the Nifty50 index, JSW Steel settled the session at a loss of 1.79 per cent, while Nestle clocked gains of more than 2 per cent.


In the broader markets, the indices traded higher. The Nifty Smallcap 250 led in green at 0.90 per cent, followed by the Nifty Smallcap 100 and Nifty Next 50 indices, both closed up by 0.82 per cent each.


Sectoral update


Sectorally, the Nifty Media index advanced 1.24 per cent, followed by the Nifty Midsmall Healthcare and Nifty Realty indices, trading higher by 0.79 per cent and 0.78 per cent respectively.


In the previous session on Friday, the BSE benchmark jumped 253 points to settle at 73,917, on the other hand, the NSE Nifty50 gained 62 points to close at 22,466.


The stock exchange opened on Saturday for a special trading session, across the equity and equity derivatives segment. The latter half of the special session was conducted on the Disaster Recovery (DR) site and the session ended at 12:30 PM. Sharing the details earlier, the NSE notified, “Members are requested to note that Exchange shall be conducting a special live trading session with intra-day switch over from Primary site to Disaster Recovery site on Saturday, May 18, 2024 in Equity and Equity Derivatives segments.”