Sensex, Nifty End Marginally Lower Amid Volatility

Indian shares ended little changed on Tuesday after trading in the red all through the day.

Geopolitical tensions took center stage as U.S. and Russian officials started the highest-level talks in Riyadh about the war in Ukraine.

European officials are not part of these discussions, with Volodymyr Zelenskyy warning his country will not recognize peace deals made without Ukrainian participation.

Investors also kept a close eye on oil price movements after a senior Russian official said that Ukrainian drones had attacked a pipeline in Russia which pumps about 1 percent of global crude supply.

The benchmark 30-share BSE Sensex hit an intraday low of 75,531.01 before ending the session down 29.47 points, or 0.04 percent, at 75,967.39.

The broader NSE Nifty index closed down 14.20 points, or 0.06 percent, at 22,945.30 after hitting a low of 22,801.50 earlier due to sustained foreign fund outflows amid valuation concerns and U.S. tariff worries.

Secondline stocks also came under selling pressure, with the BSE mid-cap and small-cap indexes falling 0.2 percent and 1.7 percent, respectively.

The market breadth was negative on the BSE, with 2,913 shares declining while 1,039 shares advanced and 112 shares ended unchanged.

Among the prominent decliners, Mahindra & Mahindra, UltraTech Cement, BEL, Trent and IndusInd Bank all fell around 2 percent.

IT stocks bucked the weak trend, with Wipro and Tech Mahindra ending up more than 2 percent each.

NTPC rallied 3.2 percent after the state-run power company said it plans to build 30GW of nuclear power capacity over the next two decades.

ONGC and Apollo Hospitals Enterprise both rose about 1 percent.

Everest Organics jumped 5 percent after reporting strong Q3 performance.