Sensex Tanks 666 Points, Nifty Trades Below 18,000 Amid Weak Cues. PSU Bank Stocks Drag

Stock update: On the 30-share Sensex platform, except two, all the constituents were in the red. Tata Motors, Tata Steel, SBI, Bajaj Finserv, Infosys, Wipro, M&M, and others were in the negative zone

The two key equity benchmarks, Sensex and Nifty, on Friday plunged in early morning trade for the fourth straight session amid weak global cues.

At 9.50 am, the S&P BSE Sensex slumped 666 points to 60,159, while the broader NSE Nifty was trading at 17,921, down 206 points.

On the 30-share Sensex platform, except two, all the constituents were in the red. Tata Motors, Tata Steel, SBI, Bajaj Finserv, Infosys, Wipro, M&M, and others were in the negative zone. On the flip side, Sun Pharma and Nestle emerged winners.

In the broader markets, Nifty MidCap 100 and Nifty SmallCap 100 indices fell up to 1 per cent.

Volatility gauge, India VIX, meanwhile, climbed over 3 per cent.

Barring Nifty Pharma index, all sectors drowned in the sea of red, with Nifty Media, Nifty Metal, and Nifty PSU Bank indices declining the most.

Among individual stocks, shares of S Chand and Company fell over 2 per cent after the company decides to sell entire stake in iNeuron to PhysicsWallah for Rs 14 crore.

Besides, shares of India Cements declined over 2 per cent after trade regulator CCI conducted search operations in its Chennai office.

The S&P BSE Sensex dropped 241 points to end at 60,826 levels in a broad-based sell-off. The Nifty50 gave up the 18,150-mark to close at 18,127, down 72 points.

Meanwhile, the rupee on Friday traded flat against the US currency in early trade amid steep losses in the domestic equity markets and firm crude oil prices.

A weak US dollar against leading world currencies and forex inflows aided the sentiment but recession fears after US jobless data weighed on the local unit, forex dealers said.

At the interbank foreign exchange market, the rupee opened marginally down by 2 paise at 82.81 against the previous close of 82.79. The local unit moved in a narrow range of 82.82 and 82.77 in morning trade. It was trading flat at 82.79 against the US dollar at 0950 hrs.

Brent crude, the pricing basis for international trading, strengthened 0.89 per cent to $81.70 a barrel on expectations of lower Russian crude exports from the Baltic region in December.

Foreign institutional investors (FIIs) turned net buyers in the capital markets on Thursday as they bought shares worth Rs 928.63 crore, according to exchange data.