Today’s stock market: Sensex, Nifty drop >1% each 2nd consecutive day; investors lose ₹7L cr in 2 days

Today's stock market: Sensex, Nifty drop >1% each 2nd consecutive day; investors lose ₹7L cr in 2 days/PTI

VoM News Desk | April 15, 2024 | 04:34 PM IST | Breaking News | Follow on Google News

Today’s stock market: Sensex, Nifty drop >1% each 2nd consecutive day; investors lose ₹7L cr in 2 days

Today’s stock market: Sensex, Nifty drop >1% each 2nd consecutive day; investors lose ₹7L cr in 2 days

Mint

Stock market today: Indian stock market benchmarks, the Sensex and the Nifty 50 closed over a per cent lower for the second consecutive session on Monday, April 15. Investors sold off equities across sectors amid rising tensions in West Asia after Iran fired more than 300 missiles and drones on Israel on Saturday, retaliating against a suspected Israeli strike on its embassy in Syria earlier.

The fresh escalation of tensions between Iran and Israel spooked investors as concerns grew that it would disrupt the global supply of commodities, including crude oil and some industrial metals, resulting in a rise in already sticky inflation. 

This will also mean that the prospects of Fed rate cuts, which are evident to be delayed beyond June, could be further delayed.

Indian stock market benchmark Sensex opened with a cut of 930 points at its day’s low level of 73,315.16, against its previous close of 74,244.90. The 30-share index finally closed 845 points, or 1.14 per cent, lower at 73,399.78.

The Nifty 50 opened 180 points lower at 22,339.05 against its previous close of 22,519.40 and extended losses to fall as much as 260 points, to hit the day’s low of 22,259.55. The index closed 247 points, or 1.10 per cent, lower at 22,272.50.

The mid and smallcap indices suffered deeper losses. The BSE Midcap index fell 1.50 per cent while the Smallcap index declined 1.54 per cent.

The overall market capitalisation of BSE-listed firms on Monday stood at nearly ₹394.7 lakh crore. Last Thursday, the overall market capitalisation of BSE-listed firms was nearly ₹402.2 lakh crore. This means in just two days, investors got poorer by about ₹7.5 lakh crore.

Investors lost nearly ₹5 lakh crore in just one day as in the previous session, BSE-listed firms’ cumulative market capitalisation was nearly ₹399.7 lakh crore.

Only six stocks – ONGC, Hindalco, Maruti, Nestle, Britannia and Bharti Airtel – managed to end in the green in the Nifty 50 index on Monday.

Shares of Shriram Finance, Wipro, ICICI Bank, Bajaj Finance and Bajaj Finserv ended as the top losers in the Nifty 50 index.

Among the sectoral indices, only Nifty Oil & Gas (up 0.41 per cent) ended higher.

Nifty Bank (down 1.63 per cent), PSU Bank (down 1.98 per cent) and Private Bank (down 1.66 per cent) fell almost 2 per cent each.

Nifty Media (down 2.23 per cent), Financial Services (down 1.75 per cent), and IT (down 1.58 per cent), also lost significantly.

What weighs on market sentiment?

While the escalation of geopolitical tensions was a major cause of the selloff in the Indian stock market on Monday, April has been volatile so far for the domestic stock market amid concerns over its rich valuation in the absence of fresh positive triggers. 

The hotter-than-expected US inflation numbers have dealt a blow to market expectations of a rate cut by the US Fed in June, strengthening the US dollar and bond yields and triggering an outflow of money from riskier equities.

“Weakness in the global market on account of the Iranian attack on Israel, persistent concerns over higher-for-longer U.S. interest rates, and weak earnings, weighted on Indian equities. Further, India’s WPI inflation accelerated to a three-month high of 0.53 per cent in March, driven by food and primary articles dampening the sentiments,” said Siddhartha Khemka, Head – Retail Research, Motilal Oswal Financial Services.

(More to come)

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by VoM News staff and is published from syndicated feed)

VoM News Desk

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