Benchmark indices on Thursday ended higher by almost a per cent each due to fag-end buying across sectors amid mixed global cues.

Sensex was up 677 points or 0.9% at 73,663 and the Nifty 50 was up 203 points or 0.9% at 22,403. On the indices, about 2,049 shares advanced, 1,640 shares declined, and 116 shares remained unchanged.

Among the sectors, barring Nifty PSU Bank, all sectoral indices ended higher.

Some notables are Nifty Consumer Durables (1.72%), IT (1.66%), Realty (1.63%), Media (1.22%) and Financial Services (1.09%).

Nifty Bank ended 0.61% higher, while the Private Bank index rose 0.67%.

Also, the volatility index India VIX fell over 2% and closed around 20.

The mid- and small-cap indices also posted strong gains; the BSE Midcap index jumped 1.07%, while the Smallcap index rose 0.85%.

The overall market capitalisation of the firms listed on BSE jumped to nearly Rs 407.4 lakh crore from nearly Rs 404.3 lakh crore in the previous session.

On the BSE, around 200 stocks, including Hero MotoCorp, Mahindra and Mahindra, IndiGo, Ashok Leyland, Bharat Forge, Havells India, Hindustan Aeronautics and Siemens, hit their fresh 52-week highs in intraday trade.

Ashok Leyland share price scaled 52-week highs of Rs 207.45 on the NSE before closing at Rs 206.70 levels.

On Nifty 50, the top gainers were Mahindra and Mahindra (3.98%), Tata Consumer (2.76%) and Bharti Airtel (2.60%).

On the downside were Maruti Suzuki (2.15%), SBI (0.98%) and Tata Motors (0.86%).

Coming as a positive development for the crisis-ridden Paytm, the domestic brokerage firm Emkay Global has initiated coverage on Paytm stock with a ‘Reduce’ rating.

Notably, following the recent RBI ban, Paytm’s share price has corrected around 55 per cent and the stock is currently trading nearly 80 per cent below its post-IPO peak seen in November 2021.

Go Digit witnessed enormous enthusiasm from the retail investors on day two of subscription.

But, it somehow struggled to get fully booked. Go Digit General Insurance IPO received 79 per cent subscription on the second day of bidding.

The portion for Retail Individual Investors (RIIs) got subscribed 2.54 times and that of non-institutional investors received 73 per cent subscription. The qualified institutional buyers (QIBs) fetched 24 per cent subscription, as per BSE data.

In the Asian market, Japan’s Nikkei jumped 1.37 per cent and Korea’s KOSPI rose 0.82 per cent. Hang Seng saw a gain of 1.56 per cent.

However, major European markets traded lacklustre. France’s CAC 40 was down over half a per cent while the UK’s FTSE and Germany’s DAX were down 0.30 per cent each when the Sensex closed.