Sensex Drops More Than 300 Points, and the Nifty Trades Below 15,700

Friday’s opening deals saw lower trading for Indian equities benchmarks, following the direction of the international markets. Today’s Asian stock market opened shakily as investors grew anxious about the state of the world economy. The worst since 1970, a 21% decline in the first half of this year was recorded on Wall Street over night.

Trends on the Singapore Exchange’s Nifty Futures (SGX Nifty) suggested that the domestic indices would open with a gap lower.

Early in the session, the broad NSE Nifty slipped 113 points or 0.71 percent lower to trade at 15,668, while the 30-share BSE Sensex dropped 331 points or 0.62 percent to 52,688.

Small- and mid-cap shares were trading poorly today as the Nifty Midcap 100 fell 0.56 percent and the mid-cap index fell 0.45 percent.

The National Stock Exchange’s 15 sector indicators, 13 of which were trading in the red. The NSE platform was outperformed by the sub-indices Nifty Bank, Nifty Auto, and Nifty Consumer Durables, which experienced declines of up to 0.83 percent, 1.16 percent, and 1.29 percent, respectively.

Titan was the highest Nifty loser among individual stocks, falling 2.59 percent to Rs 1,891. Tata Motors, Bajaj Auto, Dr. Reddy’s, and HDFC were also among the backwards.

1,084 equities on the BSE were rising while 1,061 were falling, contributing to a slightly positive total market breadth.

Titan, Dr. Reddy’s, M&M, Kotak Mahindra Bank, HDFC, Bajaj Finance, SBI, Maruti, HDFC Bank, Bharti Airtel, ICICI Bank, and Sun Pharma were some of the top losers on the 30-share BSE index.

Tech Mahindra, TCS, Tata Steel, UltraTech Cement, Wipro, and IndusInd Bank, on the other hand, were all trading in the black.

Additionally, shares of Life Insurance Corporation of India (LIC), the largest domestic financial investor and insurer in the nation, nudged 0.23% higher to trade at Rs 675.15.

On Thursday, the Sensex lost 150 points, or 0.28 percent, to end the day at 53,027, while the Nifty lost 51 points, or 0.32 percent, to end the day at 15,799.