Sensex drops over 600 points, while the Nifty trades below 16,300

Indian equities benchmarks fell sharply in early trade on Friday (Sensex and Nifty), following global market trends. Investors were concerned by the European Central Bank’s (ECB) rate hike direction and incoming U.S. inflation data, so Asian stocks fell in line with Wall Street overnight.

Trends on the Singapore Exchange’s Nifty Futures (SGX Nifty) suggested a gap-down opening for the domestic indices.

The 30-stock BSE Sensex fell 636 points, or 1.15 percent, to 54,685, while the NSE Nifty fell 194 points, or 1.18 percent, to 16,284.

Mid- and small-cap stocks were down 1.02 percent and 1.01 percent, respectively, on the Nifty Midcap 100.

The National Stock Exchange’s 15 sector indices were all trading in negative territory. The NSE platform was outperformed by the Nifty IT, Nifty Metal, and Nifty Bank sub-indices, which fell 1.79 percent, 1.96 percent, and 1.15 percent, respectively.

On a stock-by-stock basis, Wipro was the worst performer on the Nifty, falling 3.28 percent to 459.45. Among the laggards were Hindalco, Tata Steel, Tech Mahindra, and Infosys.

On the BSE, the overall market breadth was poor, with 777 shares increasing and 1,461 dropping.

Wipro, Tata Steel, Tech Mahindra, Infosys, Kotak Mahindra Bank, HDFC, Bajaj Finance, TCS, Sun Pharma, HDFC Bank, UltraTech Cement, and SBI were among the worst performers on the 30-share BSE index.

In addition, shares of Life Insurance Corporation of India (LIC), the country’s largest insurer and domestic financial investor, fell 1.77 percent to an intraday low of 709.20 rupees.

PowerGrid, Maruti, Titan, and NTPC, on the other hand, were trading in the green.