Equity benchmarks Sensex and Nifty on Friday dropped from their all-time highs owing to sells in the IT and banking stocks. The selloff on Friday was due to lack of directional cues from global markets.

The BSE Sensex ended 18.79 points or 0.04% lower at 53,140.06. Earlier on Friday, the BSE had surged to an all-time high of 53,290.81.

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The broader NSE Nifty ended 0.80 points or 0.01% lower at 15,923.40. This was the Nifty’s first drop in five trading sessions. In early trade, the index had soared to a lifetime high of 15,962.25.

HCL Tech was the top loser in the Sensex pack and shed over 3% on Friday. The other laggards were Bajaj Finserv, Infosys, ICICI Bank, IndusInd Bank and NTPC.

On the other hand, Bharti Airtel, UltraTech Cement, Tata Steel, PowerGrid and Reliance were among the gainers.

In the 30-share Sensex, 16 registered losses on Friday while 14 gained.

It was still a good week for both indices. The Sensex went up by 1.43% or 753 points, while the Nifty railled 233.60 points or 1.48%.

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“Indian market opened with gains; however, failed to maintain and ended flattish as profit-booking was triggered in major sectors barring pharma. Buying interest was seen in the pharma sector in anticipation of strong Q1 results. The risk of profit-booking is rising due to elevated performance and lack of direction from the Western developed markets with flat performance recently,” said Vinod Nair, Head of Research at Geojit Financial Services.

Foreign institutional investors (FIIs) continue as net sellers in the domestic equity market during the past few days, he added.

In the other Asian markets, bourses in Seoul, Shanghai and Tokyo ended in red, while Hong Kong-registered gains.

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Equities in Europe were largely trading with gains in mid-session deals.

Meanwhile, international oil benchmark Brent crude advanced 0.33 per cent to USD 73.71 per barrel.

On the forex market front, the rupee ended lower by 3 paise at 74.57 against the US dollar.