Nifty50 falls below 17,350, Sensex ends down 502 points while D-Street falls back after a breather

Indian equity benchmarks Sensex and Nifty50 fell a day further on Thursday after halting a losing streak that spanned eight straight sessions. Broad-based losses weighed on the leading indices, with financials and IT stocks exerting the most pressure.

The Sensex closed 501.7 points, or 0.8 percent, lower at 58,909.4 and the Nifty50 was trading at 17,321.9, down 129 points, or 0.7 percent, from its previous close.

Global investor jitters continued as investors worried about the possibility of longer-lasting higher interest rates, fueled by signs of persistent inflation in the world’s largest economy and hawkish comments from Fed officials.

Among the 36 laggards in the Nifty50 basket, Maruti Suzuki, Axis Bank, TCS, Tech Mahindra, Infosys, SBI Life and Nestlé were the hardest hit, down 1.6 to 2.6 percent on the day. On the other hand, Adani Ports, Coal India, Bharat Petroleum, Adani Enterprises and Hero MotoCorp emerged as the top blue chip gainers, up between 1.4 percent and 3.1 percent.

Among the heavyweights, Infosys, TCS, HDFC Bank, Axis Bank and Reliance were the top detractors from the 30-stock index.

All Adani Group stocks — including flagship Adani Enterprises (ADANIENT), Adani Ports (ADANIPORTS) and Adani Power (ADANIPOWER) — rose for the day in some breathing space for investors. However, since the release of a January 25 report by US-based Hindenburg Research accusing the Indian conglomerate of stock manipulation and abusive use of offshore tax havens, all of the group’s stocks have suffered heavy losses.

The Adani group has denied any wrongdoing and dismissed the Hindenburg report as baseless. ALSO READ: Adani group hits back at Hindenburg, calls out allegations of attack on India

Apart from Nifty Realty – up 2.1 percent – and Nifty Oil & Gas – which ended marginally in the green, all sectors of the NSE ended in the red.

“Rising bond yields are driving foreign money out of emerging markets, and as a result, foreign institutional investors are net sellers in the domestic market for the sixth straight day,” said Vinod Nair, head of research at Geojit Financial Services.

Foreign institutional investors took net Rs 10,474 crore from Indian stocks in six consecutive sessions on Wednesday, according to preliminary stock market data. However, domestic institutional investors made net purchases of Rs 11,699 crore during this period.

Global Markets

European markets started the day in the red, taking a weak handover from major Asian peers amid fears that the Fed and ECB will hike interest rates further to stem sweltering inflation. The pan-European Stoxx 600 index fell 0.7 percent to a monthly low in the early hours.

Dow Jones, S&P 500 and Nasdaq Composite futures were each down about half a percent, signaling a weak start for Wall Street.

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