Indian stocks opened Thursday’s session with substantial losses led by a steep decline in IT and oil and gas shares.
At 10 a.m., Sensex traded at 59,038.12 points, down 498.95 points or 0.84 per cent, whereas Nifty traded at17,612.25 points, down 147.05 points or 0.83 per cent.
Among the Nifty 50 stocks, 33 declined and the rest 17 rose this morning, National Stock Exchange data showed.
On Wednesday, financial markets, including commodity and forex, were closed on the occasion of the Ganesh Chaturthi festival.
The previous session — Tuesday, the Indian stock market’s key indices, Sensex and Nifty, surged by around three per cent.
After a sharp sell-off and bloodbath in Indian stocks on Monday, the indices managed to recover some of the losses due to broad-based resilience in the financial market fundamentals in India.
Monday’s sharp sell-off was triggered by US Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell when he said the central bank won’t back off in its fight against rising inflation.
Meanwhile, foreign portfolio investors turned net buyers in Indian equity markets for two consecutive months through August.
In August, they bought equities worth another Rs 51,204 crore, data showed. In July, they were, however, the net buyer with a total purchase of equities worth Rs 4,989 crore.
Till early July, foreign portfolio investors (FPIs) had been selling equities in the Indian markets for the past nine-to-ten months due to various reasons.
Tightening of monetary policy in advanced economies including rising demand for dollar-denominated commodities, and strength in the US dollar had triggered a consistent outflow of funds.
(inputs from ANI)