MUMBAI: The sensex dived nearly 1,400 points on Tuesday, settling just above the 76k mark, as concerns over Trump’s tariffs rattled investor confidence on Dalal Street. Foreign funds were aggressive sellers during the day.
The decline, which marked the index’s worst day since Feb 28, was driven by HDFC Bank, ICICI Bank, RIL and Infosys. Rising crude oil prices also weighed on investor sentiment, market players said. The sensex opened over 500 points lower, recovered the day’s early losses, but after that slid steadily to close at 76,025 points, down 1,390 points or 1.8%. Nifty treaded a similar path and closed 354 points or 1.5% lower at 23,166 points.
“The day’s negative opening and a bearish bias was expected since the Indian market, with its holiday on Monday, had to catch up with losses in global markets on Friday and Monday,” said Satish Chandra Aluri of Lemonn, a tech-enabled broking outfit.
The day’s selling came mainly on the back of foreign funds who recorded a net selling figure of Rs 5,902 crore, while domestic funds were net buyers at Rs 4,323 crore, BSE data showed.
India VIX, the volatility index for the Indian market which is also an indicator of the nervousness among market players, shot up 10.5% to 13.9 points. The day’s slide left investors poorer by Rs 3.5 lakh crore with BSE’s market capitalisation at Rs 409.4 lakh crore.
Of the 30 sensex stocks, only two – IndusInd Bank and Zomato – closed with gains. In the broader market, however, the advance-decline ratio was less skewed in favour of the laggards: there were 2,716 stocks that ended in the red, compared to 1,343 that were in the green.
While the selling was particularly severe in large cap stocks, mid and small-cap stocks were less affected. Compared to a 1.8% slide in the sensex, BSE’s midcap index was down 1% while smallcap index closed marginally higher, up just 0.1%.
On the sectoral front, real estate, consumer durables and IT stocks were sold the most, BSE data showed.