Falling for the third straight day, benchmark index Sensex declined by nearly 95 points while Nifty slipped below 25,500 on Friday as relentless foreign fund outflows and weak trends in global markets hit investors’ sentiment.
The 30-share BSE Sensex declined 94.73 points, or 0.11 per cent, to settle at 83,216.28. During the day, it tanked 640.06 points, or 0.76 per cent, to 82,670.95. The 50-share NSE Nifty dipped 17.40 points, or 0.07 per cent, to 25,492.30.
Among Sensex firms, Bharti Airtel tumbled 4.46 per cent after Singtel said it has sold about 0.8 per cent stake in the firm for Rs10,353 crore ($1.5 billion). Tech Mahindra, Trent, Reliance Industries, HCL Tech, Hindustan Unilever and ITC were also among the laggards.
However, Bajaj Finance, Tata Steel, Mahindra & Mahindra and Bajaj Finserv were among the gainers.
Domestic equities rebounded from early losses as buying emerged at key support levels, though it may be premature to call this a trend reversal amid mixed earnings, cautious global cues and persistent FII outflows. “Going forward, markets will closely monitor US shutdown and tariff-related developments with US-India and US-China deals to assess the durability of the current momentum,” Vinod Nair, Head of Research, Geojit Investments Limited, said.
The BSE midcap gauge went up by 0.25 per cent, while smallcap ended marginally lower by 0.01 per cent. Teck dropped 1.46 per cent, followed by telecommunication (1.19 per cent), power (0.52 per cent), BSE Focused IT (0.50 per cent), IT (0.39 per cent) and services (0.37 per cent).
However, metal jumped 1.41 per cent, financial services (0.74 per cent), commodities 0.65 per cent), auto (0.55 per cent) and bankex (0.31 per cent). In a holiday-shortened week, the BSE benchmark tanked 722.43 points or 0.86 per cent, and the Nifty declined 229.8 points or 0.89 per cent,.
A total of 2,105 stocks declined while 2,069 advanced and 141 remained unchanged on the BSE.
In Asian markets, South Korea’s Kospi, Japan’s Nikkei 225 index, Shanghai’s SSE Composite Index and Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index settled lower. Markets in Europe were trading lower. US markets ended significantly lower on Thursday.
Foreign Institutional Investors (FIIs) offloaded equities worth Rs3,263.21 crore on Thursday, however, Domestic Institutional Investors (DIIs) bought stocks worth Rs5,283.91 crore, according to exchange data.
Brent crude, the global oil benchmark, jumped 1.31 per cent to $64.21 per barrel. On Thursday, the Sensex declined 148.14 points, or 0.18 per cent, to settle at 83,311.01. The Nifty dipped 87.95 points, or 0.34 per cent, to 25,509.70.
