The stock market tanked on Thursday for the fifth consecutive session as both the Nifty 50 and Sensex commenced the day on a downward trajectory and fell over one per cent intraday.

At close, the Sensex was down 1,062 points or 1.5% at 72,404, while the Nifty 50 was down 335 points or 1.5% at 21,967.

Around 2,394 shares declined, 865 shares advanced and 102 shares remained unchanged.

The overall market capitalisation of BSE-listed firms dropped to nearly Rs 393.34 lakh crore from Rs 400.69 lakh crore in the previous session.

Analysts predict that the major Indian indices will continue losing momentum with one of the main causes of the market’s decline is the ongoing uncertainty surrounding the general elections.

Further, lacklustre Q4 results, rising crude, among other factors have led to this prolonged downturn.

In a sector-wise analysis, the Nifty Auto closed 0.78% higher while others like Nifty Bank, Nifty IT, Nifty Media, Nifty Financial Services (down 1.56%), ended in red.

On Nifty index, the shares of Hero MotoCorp Ltd (3.19%), Tata Motors Ltd (1.77%), Mahindra and Mahindra Ltd (1.52%), State Bank of India (1.13%), and Bajaj Auto Ltd (1.04%) ended as top gainers.

Larsen & Toubro Ltd (5.65%), Bharat Petroleum Corporation Ltd (4.52%), Asian Paints Ltd (4.48%), Coal India Ltd (4.40%), and Oil and Natural Gas Corporation Ltd (3.85%) were among the laggards.

Shares Muthoot Finance, and Manappuram Finance – the gold companies – traded under pressure after RBI sent the companies an advisory concerning cash disbursal of loans.

Manappuram Finance stock fell as much as 8.3% in intra-day deals today to its low of Rs 180.10. Meanwhile, Muthoot Finance lost as much as 8.8% to fall to Rs 1,510.

The shares of Tata Power also fell over 3% in early trade after the Tata group firm posted a consolidated net profit of Rs 1,045.59 crore for the fourth quarter.

The firm’s net profit grew 11.37% from the year-ago period driven by strong performance of its core thermal coal generation business.

Shares of Bank of Baroda also surged 3.4% to Rs 271 per share on after the RBI allowed the lender to onboard new customers on its mobile application BoB World.

BoB’s stock surged over 15%, outperforming a 2% rise in the benchmark Nifty 50 index so far this year.

The Hindustan Petroleum Corporation Ltd (HPCL) also declared a bonus issue in the ratio 1:2 while announcing its results for Q4FY24.

The global markets also took a break in light of a Bank of England rate decision and following a string of positive weeks.

Japanese officials raised their discussion of intervention as the yen continued to decline. Further, the Nikkei in Japan gave up previous gains and was down 0.2%.

The resource-heavy Australian share market fell 1.1%, while South Korea also retreated 1%.