Indian equities closed the week on a lower note on Friday after losing 156.44 points owing to continued selling pressure witnessed in heavy weights.

Auto, banking, metal and real estate stocks gained, while oil & gas, teck and power counters trended lower.

For the week ended Oct 17, wholesale price index (WPI) inflation continued to climb at 1.51% on pricier food items as compared to 1.21% during the week ago.

The Sensex belled the day strongly following firm worldwide signals and traded higher for a short period. Afterward, it lost some of its gains because of profit booking seen during the first half of the day. But in the second half, Sensex fell into the negative terrain and fell below 16K on selling pressure to finally end on a disappointing note.

The BSE Midcap index fell 0.54%, and the BSE Smallcap index was down by 0.77%.

Finally, the Sensex closed the day below 16,000 mark after shedding 156.44 points. It hit an intraday high of 16,360.88 and an intraday low of 15,805.20. The broad-based NSE Nifty declined
38.85 points to end at 4,711.70 after touching an intraday high of 4,853.65 and an intraday low of 4,687.50.

Among the sectoral indices, BSE Auto surged 0.94%, Bankex gained 0.49%, Metal climbed 0.25%, Realty increased 0.17% and Consumer Durables zoomed 0.11%, whereas BSE Oil & Gas declined 2.79%, TECk fell 1.93% and Power dropped 1.49%. The top movers in the 30-share index included Sterlite Ind (India), ICICI Bank, Grasim Ind, Rel Capital, Tata Motors and Maruti Suzuki.

The major losers in the Sensex pack were RCom, Bharti Airtel, Rel Infra, Tata Power Company, RIL and ONGC.