Mumbai: The stock market’s key indices, Sensex and Nifty, which had been rising over the past two days, ended lower in today’s trading. The decline in banking and financial sector stocks, along with crude oil trading above $80, was the reason for this fall.
The 30-share Sensex fell 455.59 points to 78,499.17 points, and during trading it dropped as much as 577.69 points to 78,377.07 points. The 50-share Nifty, which at one point during trading fell 113.25 points to 24,522.75 points, ended the session down 65.35 points at 24,570.65 points.
Despite favorable corporate earnings results, Indian stock markets ended lower due to uncertainty surrounding the talks on the Strait of Hormuz and weakness seen in financial sector stocks.
On the Sensex, shares of Tata Consultancy Services, Mahindra & Mahindra, State Bank of India, and Tech Mahindra rose, while Bajaj Finance fell 5.90 percent and Bajaj Finserv 4.18 percent; shares including ICICI Bank, Trent, Axis Bank, and Asian Paints also declined.
Following the introduction of a new auction mechanism in the Indian stock market for stocks with futures and options contracts, these two major indices showed divergent trends throughout the week. The final auction session in the cash segment of stocks came into effect on Monday. This introduced a new auction-based method for determining the closing price of eligible stocks, with the aim of making the price discovery process more transparent and robust.
In Asian markets, South Korea’s Kospi and Japan’s Nikkei 225 index ended lower. Shanghai’s SSE Composite Index and Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index traded higher.
Markets in Europe were higher, while U.S. markets ended lower yesterday (Thursday).
Based on stock market data, foreign institutional investors sold shares worth Rs 17.86 crore yesterday (Thursday).
The global Brent crude oil price has fallen 0.35 percent to $82.20 per barrel.