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Domestic stock market continued its fall on Friday with Sensex and Nifty declining by 1 per cent each, due to rising tensions in West Asia and concerns over outflows from foreign portfolio investors (FPI).
The 30-share Sensex tanked 808.65 points, or 0.98 per cent, to close at 81,688.45. The broader Nifty slid 235.5 points, or 0.93 per cent, to end at 25,014.6.
Friday’s session was highly volatile as Sensex gained 871.22 points and lost 964.22 points during the intraday trades. Nifty climbed to a high of 234.95 points and fell by 283.3 points in intraday deals.
In the week ended October 4, Sensex plummeted 3.09 per cent and Nifty tumbled 4.45 per cent.
On Friday, FPIs offloaded Rs 9,896.95 crore worth of domestic shares, while domestic institutional investors bought Rs 8,905.08 crore equities, according to the BSE’s provisional data. Overseas investors have sold over Rs 37,000 crore shares in the last four sessions.“The bearish sentiment continued as investors are monitoring the escalating conflict in the Middle East and have adopted a sell-on recovery strategy. Crude prices have moved up sharply but may be restricted due to an increase in production from OPEC+,” said Vinod Nair, Head of Research, Geojit Financial Services.
In case oil prices continue to spike a higher inflation scenario going ahead could further delay the prospects of a rate cut by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), said Prashanth Tapse, Senior VP (Research), Mehta Equities Ltd.
On Friday, the sell-off was seen across sectors led by realty, auto, and FMCG except IT stocks, which gained due to expected benefits from US rate cuts and defensive nature.
The NSE companies that declined the most included Mahindra & Mahindra (3.54 per cent), Bajaj Finance (2.86 per cent), Asian Paints (2.4 per cent), Nestle India (2.33 per cent) and BPCL (2.31 per cent).
According to Geojit’s Nair, the pessimism in the market is expected to continue in the near term amidst rising crude prices and fund flows to cheaper markets like China.
