Stock Market: Sensex Dives 915 Points, Nifty Trades Below 15,900 On Weak Global Cues

Stock update: On the BSE, barring HCL and TCS, the remaining 28 constituents are trading in the red. Ultracemco was the main loser with 3.82 per cent.

New Delhi: Sensex and Nifty, the two key equity benchmarks on Thursday opened trading with sharp plunge as global markets declined on high inflation rates in the US, denting investors’ sentiment.  

The consumer price index in the US rose 8.3 per cent from a year ago, however, slower than March’s peak of 8.5 per cent. The figure is still near the highest level in over 40 years.

At 10 am, the BSE Sensex fell around 915 points to 53,173, while the broader NSE Nifty was down 296 points to 15,871.

On the BSE, barring HCL and TCS, the remaining 28 constituents are trading in the red. Ultracemco was the main loser with 3.82 per cent.

In the broader markets, the BSE Midcap and Smallcap indices also opened weak and dropped up to 1.6 per cent.

On NSE, all of the 15 sector gauges were trading in the negative zone. Nifty Private Bank, Nifty Consumer Durables, and Nifty IT were underperforming the index. They declined as much as 2.30 per cent, 2.23 per cent, and 2.56 per cent, respectively.

The market breadth was also extremely negative with 2,069 stocks declining on the BSE against 459 were leading. VIX of Indian markets rose 4.7 per cent and was near 24 level.

On Wednesday, the BSE Sensex ended at 54,088, lower by 276.46 points (0.51 per cent), while the NSE Nifty dipped 72.95 points (0.45 per cent) to end at 16,167.

In Asia, Tokyo, Hong Kong, and Seoul were trading lower, while Shanghai quoted marginally higher. In the US market, stock exchanges had ended lower on Wednesday.

Meanwhile, international oil benchmark Brent crude declined 1.19 per cent to $106.22 per barrel.

According to stock exchange data, relentless selling spree, foreign institutional investors offloaded shares worth Rs 3,609.35 crore on Wednesday.

V K Vijayakumar, chief investment strategist at Geojit Financial Services, told the PTI, inflation continues to be a major headwind for markets.

"Consumer inflation in the US in April coming at 8.3 per cent reinforces market's concern about aggressive rate hikes by the Fed and the possibility of a US recession in 2023. Even though domestic institutional investors (DII) buying is more than foreign institutional investors (FII) selling now, that is not enough to lift sentiments in the market since the macro headwinds are strong,” Vijayakumar said.