Mumbai, Jul 23 (IANS): Indian equity indices made a smart recovery from the day's lows and closed flat on Tuesday, following robust budget announcements.

At closing, Sensex was down 73 points or 0.09 per cent, at 80,429 and Nifty was down 30 points or 0.12 per cent, at 24,479.

During the trading session, the Sensex touched a high of 80,766 points and a low of 79,224 points. Nifty touched a high of 24,582 points and a low of 24,074.

In the Sensex pack, Titan, ITC, NTPC, Infosys, HCL Tech, HUL, and Sun Pharma were the top gainers. L&T, Bajaj Finance, SBI, Axis Bank, HDFC Bank, and Power Grid were top laggards.

A declining trend was seen in midcap and smallcap stocks as compared to largecap stocks.

The Nifty Midcap 100 index fell 339 points or 0.60 per cent to 56,285 and the Nifty Smallcap 100 index closed at 18,400, down 162 points or 0.88 per cent.

Mandar Bhojane, Research Analyst at Choice Broking, said: "The market is expected to remain highly volatile. Investors should hold their positions with a trailing stop-loss. Any dip will be a buying opportunity as the overall trend remains bullish."

Among the sectoral indices, Auto, IT, FMCG, and Media were the top gainers and PSU bank, fin service, metal, and realty index were the top laggards.

Rupak De, Senior Technical Analyst at LKP Securities, said: "On the lower end, immediate support is placed at 24,400. Heavy call writing at 24,500 indicates that the selling pressure will remain prevalent in the market until Nifty decisively breaches above 24,500. On the lower end, a fall below 24,400 might trigger a correction towards 24,200/24,000."