Winter chill on D-Street! Sensex slides over 550 points; Nifty below 18K

After opening higher, following positive global equities and modestly hawkish Federal Reserve minutes, Indian equity indices reversed their early gains and turned negative on Thursday.

BSE Sensex was trading 597 points or 0.98% lower at 60,131 around 1.30 pm. Nifty50 was trading at 17,897, down 145 points or 0.79%.

“Local traders are taking the opportunity to book profit as concerns of higher valuations weigh while global macroeconomic concerns continue to remain a major worry,” Prashanth Tapse, Senior VP (Research), Mehta Equities, said.


From the 30-share pack, Bajaj Finance and Bajaj Finserv were the top losers, falling over 6%. ICICI Bank, Power Grid, Titan, Infosys, Axis Bank, Wipro, and Tech Mahindra were also traded with cuts.

Sectorally, Nifty Financial Services fell 1.32%, and Nifty Bank declined 0.92%. However, Nifty Auto and Nifty FMCG managed to stay in the green zone.

“Despite the hawkish minutes, Wall Street closed in the positive territory because the markets expect a soft landing for the US economy since the economy continues to be resilient,” V K Vijayakumar, Chief Investment Strategist at Geojit Financial Services, said.

“In India, the near-term challenge to the market comes from the sustained selling by FIIs who sold Rs 2620 crores equity in the cash market yesterday, taking their selling spree to 9 consecutive days,” Vijayakumar added.

After volatile trading following the release of the minutes from the Federal Reserve's most recent meeting, US stocks ended higher on Wednesday. Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 0.40%, S&P 500 surged 0.75% and Nasdaq Composite advanced 0.69%.

Stocks in Asia were higher on Thursday. Japan’s Nikkei 225 rose 0.40%, South Korea’s Kospi advanced 0.38% and China’s Shanghai Composite surged 1%.

Dow futures was also trading 95 points lower at 33,322, signaling that Wall Street was headed for a negative start on Thursday.

The Indian rupee was little changed against the US dollar on Thursday as state-run banks bid for the greenback. The Indian rupee declined 0.07% to 82.75 against the US dollar as of 1.27 pm IST. Brent crude March futures surged 0.6% to $78.29 a barrel and US West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude futures increased 0.7% to $73.34 a barrel.